
in 1849 - 50 - 51 .- 



BY WfE. SURTEES, UC.L. 









RECOLLECTIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 

in 1849 - 50 - 51 . 

BY W. E. SURTEES, D.C.L. 


Part I. 

If you would know the form of the rock at Dover, you need only look 
at that at Calais; and if you would acquaint yourself with the composi¬ 
tion of the soil at Calais, you may learn it by analysing that at Dover. 
They were once united, but afterwards torn apart by a convulsion :— 

-Cliffs which had been rent asunder ; 

A dreary sea now flows between ; 

But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder 
Shall wholly do away, I ween, 

The trace of that which once hath been. 

The accidents of culture may make some little, and temporary, differ¬ 
ence in the appearance between the farms on each side; but the same 
plants are indigenous to, and will flourish best in, both. 

It is thus morally with the inhabitants of Great Britain and those of 
the United States of North America. Both people have the same 
Anglo-Saxon, Danish, and Norman foundation, carrying with it the 
same skill in navigation, and the same enterprise in war and commerce; 
both retain the same love of liberty, obey the same common law, and 
respect the interpretation of the same judges. The faults, too, and vices of 
both (amiable weaknesses shall we agree to call them?) are pretty nearly 
the same. Both people have unbounded self elation—the citizens of the 
United States from overvaluing themselves; the English, from under¬ 
estimating the rest of the world. And it must be acknowledged that in 
regard to the mental process by which that pleasing result is attained, 
our transatlantic cousins have the merit of being, if not less ridiculous 
than ourselves, at least less offensive. But such are our reciprocal mis¬ 
apprehensions, and so desirable is it to remove them, that, in any trial 
of skill between us, the worst thing for ourselves would be that we should 
beat, and the worst thing for our rivals that we should be beaten. 
Again, to the paw of the lion and to the claw of the eagle belongs the 
same tender disinterested instinct to cherish and protect, to endow with what 
we justly call the advantages of our free institutions, as large a portion of 
the world as possible. This is evinced on the part of the United States by 
a continual expansion which knows no parallel, except in our own colonial 
augmentation, or in the deadly, noiseless, Upas-like growth of despotic 
Russia; and it is illustrated by their nation arrogating to themselves, 
and having conceded to them, the name of Americans ; whereas the other 
inhabitants of America are called Canadians, Mexicans, Peruvians, &c., 
from the name of the limited country, not that of the vast quarter of the 
globe on which they live. Now, in the United States, in the ordinary 






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Recollections of North America, in 1849 - 50 - 51 . 

transactions of business, Mexican and Spanish money is current; but the 
money of the United States only is taken at their post-office; and, should 
you there offer a Mexican dollar in payment, you would be asked, as 
a matter of course, whether you had “no American money with you.’’ 

Respecting a great people, having so much of our own blood and cha¬ 
racter, to whom our grandchildren emigiating may belong, as their emi¬ 
grating grandsires belonged to us, we must naturally entertain no ordi¬ 
nary curiosity. Much has been written on this subject. Something, 
however, probably remains to be told; both because some tourists have 
composed their travels as if they supposed that, by always turning up 
their noses, they should pass for having an aristocratic organisation ; and 
because that which was written on the United States ten years ago is as 
obsolete now as it would have been had it been written on an old country 
of Europe a hundred years since. Under this impression, a few random 
recollections of a tour in North America, principally in the United States, 
but not confined to them, are thrown together with a haste which de¬ 
mands apology. 

In the July of 1849 I arrived in New York from Liverpool, and in 
the September of 1851 I returned to Liverpool from New York. The 
time devoted to my tour was comprised between these periods. 

I went out to America in the English mail-steamer Europa f belong¬ 
ing to the Cunard company, and returned by the American mail-steamer 
Atlantic , belonging to the company named after Mr. Collins. I am 
bound to mention that in the Europa , in consequence of a small cistern 
which supplied the passengers’ cabin not having been cleaned out when 
a large cistern supplying other portions of the vessel was cleaned out, the 
water served in the passengers’ cabin, though filtered through a sponge, 
to make it look clear, was intolerably disgusting to the taste. The effect 
was distressingly obvious from the first: the cause, and the fact that all 
the time the cabins of the officers and crew of the ship had been supplied 
with good water, I only learnt towards the end of the voyage. But, of 
the Atlantic steam-ship, and all connected with its management, I could 
speak only with unqualified praise. 

With the appearance of New York and its bay the British public is 
already familiar, from descriptions and from pictures; and I will merely 
mention that I have never seen anything of its kind so beautiful as the pro¬ 
spect of the two seen together ; and that the best view which I have had of 
them is from a hill in Statten Island, commonly called, from the residence 
of a New Orleans lady, Madame Grimes’s Hill. This view, I am as¬ 
sured, reminds Eastern travellers of a view of Constantinople from the 
Golden Horn. 

As Washington is the political, so New York undoubtedly may claim 
to be the commercial, capital of the United States. What Lombard- 
street is to London, Wall-street is to New York ; and, according to the 
wills or exigencies of its bankers, money is scarce or abundant, credit is 
easy or inaccessible, and trade is slow or brisk, throughout the Union. 


* An arrangement may here be pointed out, showing at once to which of the 
two great Atlantic steam-navigation companies any vessel may belong. The 
names of all the vessels of the Cunard company end with an a, as Arabia , America , 
Europa; while those of the Collins company end with a c, as Pacific , Baltic, 
A t! antic. 




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Recollections of North America , in 1849-50-51. 

Though the commercial superiority of New York is acknowledged, it 
is far from having a social or literary supremacy conceded to it by all, 
either of the more northern or southern cities. And the Englishman, 
who should form his judgment of the American character merely from 
the fashionable parties of New York, and from the large hotels of the 
northern watering-places, such as Saratoga and Newport, would do in¬ 
justice to its more sterling, and to its more engaging traits. 

In their speculative character, in their vast commission business, in their 
love of ostentation, in their amusing habit of praising their city and them¬ 
selves, the New Yorkers (as the inhabitants of New York are called) must 
remind one, who has ever mixed in Liverpool society, of something that he 
has seen before. In New York, as in Liverpool, the young ladies walk out 
in the streets (or, according to the common phrase with the Americans, 
which I wish they could be induced to alter, “ on the street”) with the 
very thinnest shoes and the very gayest dresses, such as in London or 
Paris it would be unusual, not to say improper, to wear in a morning, 
except in a carriage, a horticultural fete, or a concert. In New York, 
too, you occasionally see a brusquerie, or pertness of manner, which is 
not very bewitching, but of which I think 1 many years ago observed 
traces amongst some of the “ Lancashire witches” of Liverpool. And as 
the people of Liverpool have not always their pretensions allowed by the 
neighbouring Cheshire squirearchy, so those of New York do not invariably 
pass current at their own value with the well-bred gentry of Virginia and 
South Carolina, or the literary coteries of Boston. Yet New York and 
Liverpool contain charming individuals and families; and some I should 
name (would it not be an unpardonable liberty) that would grace and 
honour any society, either of America or Europe. But it must be ad¬ 
mitted that in most of the sets of New York, and especially in that which 
is considered the most fashionable,* the gold and the silver, and the brass 
and the iron, and the clay, are sometimes, as in Nebuchadnezzar’s image, 
rather incongruously intermingled. The New Yorkers require excite¬ 
ment ; they delight in a lion, whether it is an author or a singer, a hero 
or a heroine, a prince or a princess. They are often taken in ; but in 
these cases, 

Doubtless the pleasure is as great 

In being cheated as to cheat, 

for both parties have their amusement out of the deception. 

Yet it must make any honest and observant person, acquainted with 
both nations, indignant to hear, as I have heard, a disposition to run 
after lords reproached by the English against the Americans. I do not 
believe that in any portion of the Union does that (as Punch so happily 
calls it) “ flunkeyism” prevail, which is so common amongst that par¬ 
ticular section of English and Scotch society that styles itself the upper, 
but is styled by others the middle class; and as for the Irish, the one only 
matter in the British constitution which many of them seem to compre¬ 
hend is, that an hereditary legislator is an object of respect. In the United 
States, no doubt, a lord is regarded with some interest and curiosity, from 
historical associations. A lord founded the state of Maryland; several able 
governors of particular states, in the colonial times, adorned the peerage ; 

* From the loud talking, exaggerated manners, and self-sufficient airs of some 
of the members of this company, it has been styled by the French les comediens. 



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Recollections of North America , in 1849-50-51. 

a lord was one of the ablest advocates of the rights of the colonists at 
the commencement of the revolutionary war, and his speeches are at this 
day studied as those of a classic, by every educated American, from the 
schoolboy up to the President. But in the United States, as contra¬ 
distinguished from England, his excellency and my lord take their 
chance with the author and the singer, and the last interesting importa¬ 
tion of the dav ; and—which no doubt seems to the ambassador and his 
lordship very bizarre —are probably beaten out of the field. I know a 
case in which the family of an English peer, who, in the country, are on 
visiting terms with the family of a neighbour, a very rich manufacturer, 
do not condescend even to bow to them in London ; and this state of 
things the manufacturer has endured. At the time that the late Sir 
Robert Peel was summoned from Italy by William IV. to form an ad¬ 
ministration, I myself heard the younger son of a newly-made peer exclaim 
aloud, in the library of a London club, that things had come to a pretty 
pass, when the government of this country was kept at a stand-still a 
fortnight “ for the son of a cotton-spinner.” And if there were any sons 
of cotton-spinners present—and they were as likely to be as not —it is 
not improbable that they thought this speech as fine and spirited as the 
speaker did himself. Verily there are some points on which the United 
States have much to learn before they can venture to compete with an 
old country like England! 

In New York ostentation of wealth is more important to social position 
than it is in any other great city in the Union. Many private houses 
have large and richly-furnished suites of reception-rooms, in which, 
nevertheless, the establishment is exceedingly small, and the family, on 
ordinary occasions, dine in a little back parlour on the area-floor. Very 
costly dinners are given by persons who can afford them ; and I have 
heard of a ball in the winter, for the flowers to decorate which as much 
was paid as 1000 dollars—a little more than 200/. These fetes are 
imitated by persons who affect the same station, but cannot afford the 
same expenses. A crisis comes, and the pretender to wealth goes down ; 
but he rises again in the west, somewhere on the Ohio, Mississippi, or 
great lakes ; and there the tourist will recognise him engrossed in his 
schemes, to acquire the means once more to cut a dash. 

Respecting expenditure, I will observe that you never, in New York, 
hear any one say openly, “ I cannot afford ita phrase which, in Eng¬ 
land, is occasionally in the mouth of almost every one who has a character, 
and is accustomed to have money. 

The great northern watering-places of the United States remind an 
Englishman of Harrogate ; but they are more fashionably attended than 
Harrogate has recently been. In these there are immense hotels, and 
the ordinary mode of living is, in one of them, to take a bedroom only, 
and, using the public drawing-room and dining-room, to have your 
meals at a vast table cChote. At Harrogate, by the prescriptive usage of 
the place, you are permitted—and, indeed, expected—to speak to your 
neighbour at dinner, without any introduction ; though it is commonly 
understood that a mere Harrogate acquaintance need not afterwards be 
kept up. But at these northern watering-places, should a gentleman, 
or should a lady, attempt to enter into conversation with a lady occupying 
the next chair, the person making the advance would stand a good 


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Recollections of North America , in 1849 - 50 - 51 . 

chance of getting a rebuff. This system, so different from that of the 
tables d'hote of France and Germany, involves, unless you have your 
party with you, the restraints, without the amusements, of society. You 
must not, between the courses, take out of your pocket a book or a news¬ 
paper, as you can in an English coffee-room ; and you had better not 
run the risk of speaking to the lady w'ho may be sitting next you. Yet, 
perhaps, this reserve may be justifiable in its origin ; since, for such 
peculiarities as I have seen in the habits of the United States, I have 
generally found, upon investigation, that there were satisfactory reasons. 
It may be, that it is more difficult there than in Europe to terminate an 
undesirable acquaintance, or check the forced growth of an acquaintance 
into an intimacy. 

Of the innumerable sets of New York, probably each set has its re¬ 
presentatives at these watering-places. The keeper of the retail store, 
the keeper of the wholesale store,* the retired merchant, the newspaper 
editor, the descendant of governors and senators, and the son of the 
petty farmer, who, through his own honourable exertions, now creditably 
occupies their place, all having come, perhaps, from the same city, and 
having had some little intercourse in business, converse together under 
the balconies of the hotels. But their wives and daughters commonly 
reciprocate the most repulsive frigidity towards each other, unless they 
fancy their neighbours to be in quite as grand a set as themselves. This 
would not be a pleasant spectacle in a monarchy ; and it is not a pleasant 
spectacle in a republic. Their own illustrious Washington, who always 
thought and acted like a gentleman, lays down in his “ Rules of Beha¬ 
viour,” that “ every action in company ought to be with some sign of 
respect to those present.” t And one cannot help fancying that per¬ 
sonages, who are unavoidably constrained by their superior position to 
act on a different principle, would do well to incur the expense of taking 
private lodgings, or private rooms in an hotel, rather than dine at a 
dinner-table, sit on a sofa, and play on a pianoforte, common to those to 
whom, nevertheless, they are bound to display, in a marked manner, the 
graceful proportions of their backs. 

To the great southern watering-place, the White Sulphur Springs of 
Virginia, I have not been. But I am assured, and believe, that this 
mountain-retreat is characterised by ease, want of pretension, and all 
the essentials of good-breeding. And I only trust that the railroads, 
which are each year rendering it more accessible from all portions of the 
country, will not obliterate its distinctive social charms. 

Albany is the political capital of the state of New York; and to it, 
whoever visits the city of New York, is sure to ascend in one of the 
Hudson River steam-boats. The Hudson, or North River, as it is often 
called from the direction from which it flows, rivals in its scenery the 
wildest and most beautiful portions of the Rhine; and, if it has on its 
banks large hotels, handsome country-seats, and neat villas, almost all 
built of wood, and painted white, and looking in the clear air and 

* Both what the English call shops and what they call warehouses, the Ameri¬ 
cans call stores. It would seem as if the Americans were anxious not to be called, 
as we were by Napoleon, a nation of shopkeepers; for, with them, you seldom 
hear any place, except a barber’s room, spoken of as a shop. 

f Sparks’s “Life of Washington,” p. 513. 



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Recollections of North America, in 1849 - 50 - 51 . 

bright sunshine, as if made of Parian marble, instead of the gloomy ruins 
of castles—and hence, to the mere artist, it may be the less attractive of 
the two—it has associations which, to an Englishman, should render it 
far the more interesting. 

At Tarrytown, on its banks, is the spot where the ill-starred Major 
Andr& was captured; and not far off is the village of Tappan, where he 
was executed, while 

His mourners were two hosts—his friends and foes. 

A little higher up the river than Tarrytown, modestly hiding itself 
amongst the trees, yet, as you change your position, playfully peeping 
out from them, as if it had caught something of the vein of sly humour 
which enlivens the charming fictions of its owner, is the residence of 
Mr. Washington Irving. Again, a little higher up, is West Point, the 
strongest military station on the river, which Arnold, its commander, 
would have betrayed to the British for gold. Here has been established 
a military academy, where, both discipline and instruction being con¬ 
sidered, the best education in the United States is said to be given. 
Though the national government keeps but a small standing army, it 
here educates a great number of young gentlemen for officers; well 
knowing that, what with the numerous militia of the various states, and 
with the spirit of the people, soldiers could at any time be made, were there 
officers fit to command them. No man enters the United States’ army 
as an officer, unless from West Point; and, consequently, no private can 
obtain a commission. And in the United States’ army there is no pro¬ 
motion by purchase. 

Leaving West Point, we soon pass Newburg, where is a house used 
by General Washington as head-quarters during a portion of the revo¬ 
lutionary war. Then you pass Kaatskill. And what schoolboy does not 
know that in the woods above Kaatskill, Rip Van Winkle supped with 
the fairies, and afterwards slept for twenty years ? And as the traveller 
in Switzerland ascends the Rigi for the prospect, so should the traveller 
in the state of New York spend a day, or a week, or a month, at 
the Mountain House, a large hotel on the summit of the Kaatskill 
mountains. 

But I will no longer linger over the charms of the Hudson. You 
eventually disembark at Albany, the capital of the state, where very 
agreeable society is to be found. The comptroller, a sort of state 
chancellor of the exchequer, who has his office in Albany, mentioned to 
me an excellent law, which the New York legislature had of late years 
enacted, requiring the various banks in the state to give a security to 
the state, and, through it, to the public. Any one in the state of New 
York may establish a bank, and may issue notes; but the notes must 
be supplied through the office of the comptroller, who must supply them 
to that amount, and only to that amount, that the security in United 
States’ stock or New York state stock deposited with him by the banker 
will cover. Thus, in the event of a bank failing, the public would be 
protected from any loss through its notes; as the state would sell the 
stock and redeem the notes with the proceeds. 

From Albany you may catch a glimpse of Troy, on the opposite side of 
the liver, a little higher up. 



9 


Recollections of North America , in 1849 - 50 - 51 . 

Procedo, et parvam Trojam, simulataque magnis 

Pergama, et arentem Xanthi cognomine rivum, 

Agnosco. 

But the good taste of the community is now generally preferring Indian 
to classical names. 

At Albany I took the railroad train, or, as it is commonly called in 
America, “the cars,” and proceeded to Auburn. A car consists of a 
carriage in the shape of a long saloon, with a passage down the centre, 
and, on each side, running at right angles from the passage, a number 
of benches stuffed and backed, each of which will hold two persons. In the 
winter there is a stove near the middle of this saloon. The trains in the 
southern and middle states are not divided into first, second, and third- 
class carriages, as with us ; for on the introduction of railroads it was, in 
these found, on trial, that no native American would condescend to 
travel by any class except the first. There is, however, a separate car 
in front for negroes and all others tainted with African blood; which is 
only reasonable, as the offence of “ coloured people” against the senses 
is often not confined to the eyes. Occasionally a cheaper train, called 
“ an emigrant train,” is run. In the New England states they generally 
have a second-class car, but no separate car for negroes. The fuel generally 
burnt by the engines is wood, which is stacked at intervals by the side of 
the railroads. On coming to the station from which you start, you find 
at most of the railroads a porter, whose duty it is, after having ascertained 
where you are bound, to append by a leathern strap to each article of your 
luggage, or “ baggage,” as it is commonly called in America, a tin ticket, 
on which is stamped a letter for the place of your destination, and some 
particular number in figures ; he then gives you a duplicate of each of 
these tickets; and, on your arrival at your journey’s end, you may hand 
these duplicates to the porter of your hotel, or to any servant who may 
meet you; and to the producer of these, but to no one else, will your 
luggage be given up. Would not the introduction of this system be a 
great improvement upon ours, in which persons of all sexes, and ages, 
and positions, have, on the stopping of a train at a great station, to 
crowd up together against a railing to recognise and claim their boxes? 

Auburn is one of those huge villages in the western part of the state of 
New York, which, were they in England, would be dignified with the 
name of towns. It has a large “state prison ;” from the discipline pursued 
in which, the silent, is often called the Auburn, in opposition to the Penn - 
sylvanian, or separate system. Those who wish to go over it must pay a 
small fee on entering; and I believe it was the first and last time that, 
in the United States, I found anything charged for permission to inspect 
any public property, whether belonging to a state or to the nation. Nor 
are previous applications nor written orders as generally necessary as with 
us. Over the United States’ armory at Springfield, and over the United 
States’ dockyard, or, as the Americans with greater precision call it, 
“ Navy yard,” at Boston, you may roam unquestioned at any reasonable 
hour; and the workmen at both places seem to think that it is incumbent 
upon them to show the duties of hospitality by answering, as com¬ 
pletely as they can, any question which a stranger may put. Though 
in such matters we ourselves are improving, we have still much to learn 
from the Americans. Again, though probably you cannot hurry through 


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Recollections of North America, in 1849 * 50 - 51 . 

a crowded street in any of the principal cities of the United States with¬ 
out justling against a general and half a dozen colonels and majors of 
militia in plain clothes, and can hardly enter into a shop or an hotel with¬ 
out hearing the book-keeper addressed as captain (for the population of 
every state seems to take to militia-soldiering as a holiday amusement), 
you never see a soldier of the national army out of his proper place. The 
other day, at the British Museum, I was paying a hack-cabman, who had 
driven me there, having brought with me a few specimens which I had 
collected in America as presents for the institution, when a soldier, walk¬ 
ing as sentry, told the cabman that he must move on. His cab was not 
occupying room that was wanted, as there w’as no carriage behind. It is 
not pleasant to be reminded, by the intrusion of a soldier with a bayonet 
into a business, which, if done at all, should be done by a policeman, that 
one has returned to one’s native land ; but this an American never need 
fear. 

But to return to the New York state prison at Auburn. The only 
separation in the workshops seemed to be that caused by the dif¬ 
ference of sex, and the difference of work; but silence was enjoined. 
All the prisoners were made to work : those, who had any trade of their 
own before they came there, as shoemakers, carpenters, &c., were made to 
work at that; and those who knew no trade were taught one. What 
the prisoners produce is sold to pay the costs of the establishment; and 
I was told by the guide that this now realises a sufficient sum to pay its 
current expenses. When a prisoner leaves, he is presented with a small 
sum of money (two dollars was, I think, the sum mentioned), and a suit 
of clothes, in order that he may not be driven to crime by destitution : 
but a larger sum, it had been found, was likely to induce habits of 
idleness. 

But the penitentiary at Albany is generally considered the most perfect 
specimen of the working of this system. Here not an eye was raised, as 
the party that I accompanied passed through the rooms. The men, I 
think, were principally engaged in plaiting cane-bottomed chairs, and the 
women in covering glass bottles with wicker-work to “send west.” 
Probably the prisoners here were generally confined but for a short time, 
and the arts in which they were employed were such as could be quickly 
acquired. In the silent system almost everything must depend upon the 
tact of the manager; and the penitentiary at Albany is fortunate in 
having secured the services of Mr. Pilsbury, who has inherited the skill, 
as w T ell as the occupation, of his father. 

Of the father I will copy an anecdote, from a biography of the son, 
published in Albany; merely premising that, whereas it is very unusual 
for an English gentleman to be shaved by a barber, it is the ordinary 
course adopted by all classes in the United States : 

“ A desperate fellow of the name of Scott, alias Teller, was sent for 
fifteen years to Wethersfield (a prison in Vermont, of which Captain 
Pilsbury was warden); he had previously been confined in Sing-Sing 
and other prisons. He was determined not to work or submit to any 
rules. Of course, Captain Pilsbury treated him accordingly. He very 
soon cut one of his hands nearly off, on purpose to avoid labour; but his 
wound was immediately attended to, and, in less than one hour afterwards, 


11 


Recollections of North America , in 1849 - 50 - 51 . 

he found himself turning a large crank with one hand. It was then that 
he declared he would murder the warden on the very first opportunity. 
Soon after this, the regular barber of the prison being sick, Scott, who 
had, it was said, when young, worked at that trade, was directed by the 
deputy-warden to take the place of the barber, and shave the prisoners 
throughout the establishment. Captain Pilsbury, on going into the shop 
soon afterwards, was told by one of the assistants that the prisoners did 
not like being shaved by this man ; that he had behaved very badly ever 
since he had been an inmate ; and that they were afraid of him. Captain 
Pilsbury immediately took the chair, and directed Scott to shave him. 

“ From that moment he became one of the best behaved convicts in 
the prison, and remained so until Captain Pilsbury left it, in November, 
1832. Soon after the appointment of a new warden Scott tried to 
escape, and murdered one of his keepers. For this crime he was hanged, 
at Hartford, in 1833.” 

Captain Pilsbury was the chief promoter of the silent system in New 
England ; and seems to have been peculiarly endowed with the talent of 
producing the strictest discipline by persuasion. In a notice of him in a 
Philadelphia newspaper, it is stated that he seldom punished; but, when 
he did, he took special pains to show the criminal that he regarded him 
as an unfortunate human being, not as a brute. 

At Philadelphia, the principal city, though not the political capital, of 
Pennsylvania, there is a vast prison called the “ Eastern State Penitentiary 
of Pennsylvania.” Here also the prisoners are made to work; but they 
work in their solitary cells. A recent report acknowledges that “ the 
commonwealth is not an immediate pecuniary gainer by the maintenance 
of the present system of discipline;” but maintains, that it is “believed 
to be better for all the purposes of reformation.” It adds, that “ the in ¬ 
spectors have denied that the system, as there administered, had any 
tendency to produce the disease” of insanity; but acknowledges that, 
“ where hereditary predisposition to it has existed, they have admitted 
that its effect has been, in some instances, to develop it more speedily.”* 

In going over the cells of the penitentiary at Philadelphia, I was intro¬ 
duced to one of them, which had been occupied by a young gentleman, 
who had thrown away all the advantages of birth, education, and talents. 
Confined here as a criminal, he had endeavoured to relieve his solitude 
by the composition of some touching and beautiful verses, alluding to his 
own sad fall. From his clothes lie had succeeded in extracting some 
dyes, and with these he had painted the verses in a sort of fresco style 
upon the wall of his cell, where they still remain, to claim the admiration 
and the regrets of the stranger. 

It is time to return to Auburn, from speaking of the penitentiary of 
which I have been led into my digression. From Auburn the railroad 
takes you to the “village” of Geneva, situated on a beautiful little lake 
called Lake Seneca. It has a college, and several places of public 
worship, and is one of the sweetest spots for a residence that I ever saw. 
It is built on the side of a hill at the lower part of the lake; and, though 
its wooded hills have nothing of the rugged grandeur so conspicuous in 


Report of 1849. 






12 Recollections of North America , in 1849 - 50 - 51 . 

the distant scenery of its Swiss namesake, it is not without some pre¬ 
tension to the ambitious comparison which it suggests. 

From Geneva a short railroad journey brings you to Niagara. 

Who, visiting the United States, would not see Niagara? but who 
dare attempt to penetrate the thick cloud, which its spray ever raises 
before it to the heavens, and depict in words that awful image of the 
power of God ? 

A few hundred yards below the Falls of Niagara, on the United States’ 
side, there is a ferry, which in ten minutes will take you to Canada; 
and, a few miles above, or a few miles below the falls, you may get Lake 
Erie, or Lake Ontario steamers, and may start for the Upper or Lower 
Canadian provinces. 

In the autumn of 1849 I made a short sojourn at Montreal and 
Quebec; and a few observations respecting Canada, as it seemed then, 
may not be objectionable. 

After having descended a considerable portion of the St. Lawrence, 
the steamer in which I was a passenger landed me at a village called La 
Chine. It derived its name from the first French navigators of the 
stream, who fancied, when in their ascent they had arrived at this point, 
that they were approaching China. From La Chine, however, half an 
hour’s railway ride takes you, not to Peking, but to Montreal. Mon¬ 
treal, in its straight narrow streets, and substantial stone houses, still 
bears all the appearance of what it formerly was—an ancient French 
city. Here at the time I made no stay, but, intending shortly to return, 
I embarked once more on a steamer and descended the St. Lawrence to 
Quebec, the Gibraltar of America. 

Joining on to the western fortifications of this city are the Plains of 
Abraham, with their deep precipitous bank, sloping to the river. What 
patriot could visit Quebec without traversing the battle-field where Wolfe 
“ died happy,” and where Montcalm rejoiced that he should not survive 
the surrender of the city which had been committed to his defence ? 

In an open space in the upper part of Quebec, an obelisk has been 
erected, with an inscription, thus commencing: 

WOLFE. MONTCALM. 

mortem virtus communem, 
famam historia, 
monumentum posteritas 
dedit. 

So far the inscription is perfect; but, alas! 

That maiden’s bust, as fair as heart could wish, 

Should foully end, with scaly tail, a fish! 

The inscription proceeds at considerable length to tell you that the monu¬ 
ment was put up when Lord Dalhousie was governor; that he had pro¬ 
moted the undertaking by his patronage and liberality, and asks you 
triumphantly, what could be more worthy than this of “ duce egregio,” 
an illustrious general. In fact, the greater part of this inscription is a 
monument to the had taste of the late Earl of Dalhousie. Is there no 
friend of his family in Canada who will do it and the public the kindness 
to get three-quarters of the inscription chiselled out? 


13 


Recollections of North America , in 1849 - 50 - 51 . 

The villagers about Quebec speak nothing but French, if at least a 
dialect may be so called which the modern Parisians cannot understand. 
They are primitive, poor, ignorant, well-disposed, and contented. Of 
confiding and flexible characters, they are governed by the village priest 
and the village doctor. Their custom is of small value to us, as they 
produce, or make nearly all that little which they consume or use. They 
call their Indian neighbours les sauvages; and the Indians might, per¬ 
haps, without much injustice, retort the appellation. 

Returning to Montreal, I there made what inquiries I could respecting 
the general feeling and condition of the colony. Several circumstances 
had recently occurred to create a strong desire for annexation with the 
United States in the breasts of many of the Canadians. By the free- 
trade principles, which England had recently adopted, she had deprived 
her colonies of the monopoly of supplying the home market. The Cana¬ 
dian merchants had for some time been losing money; but they thought 
money was to be made again, if they could get the advantage of the New 
\ork market without being subjected to the duty (20 per cent. I believe) 
which they now have to pay; and that they could raise funds for public 
works on better terms, when they should have passed what they consi¬ 
dered as a transition state. In the rebellion of 1837, the humbler of the 
Scotch emigrants were in favour of annexation, and the corresponding 
class of Irish were opposed to it; from either of which circumstances it 
might fairly be assumed that the land would increase in value if the 
country should become a portion of the United States. To those who were 
influenced by mere mercenary motives was now to be added (if at least 
we may judge from the tone of their speeches and newspapers) a consider¬ 
able number of a class, which had hitherto been considered the warmest 
advocates of the British connexion ; but which was now goaded in an op¬ 
posite direction by party rancour and disappointed ambition. A Conser¬ 
vative ministry having dissolved the Canadian parliament, and being out¬ 
voted in their own new parliament, Lord Elgin could not do otherwise 
than construct a ministry on different principles out of the radical and 
French-Canadian parties. Its measures gave great dissatisfaction to the 
Conservative party; but they seemed to consider their greatest grievance to 
be that the governor-general, in his anxiety to conciliate the partisans of the 
new ministry, had unnecessarily slighted, in the intercourse of private life, 
the chiefs of the English Tory party, who had been instrumental in putting 
down the former rebellion. Probably these slights have been much ex¬ 
aggerated by the watchful suspicions of the Tories ; for I heard so trifling 
a matter as that he had at his own table asked a Radical to take wine 
with him, and then asked one of the recognised Tory leaders to join them, 
alleged in Montreal against Lord Elgin as a mortal offence. I3e that as 
it may, the effects of his unpopularity are serious. Some straggling 
soldiers, at the time of the rebellion, had been caught, and killed, with 
wanton cruelty, by the Canadian Radicals. This is still remembered 
throughout the army; and officers and men sympathise with the Tories 
in their dislike to the governor-general, whom they regard as the friend 
of the butchers of their comrades. In the spring of 1849, the parliament- 
houses at Montreal were intentionally, and publicly, set on fire and burnt 
down, with no opposition from those who are usually counted upon as the 



14 


Recollections of North America , in 1849-50-51. 

friends of order. The ruin was spoken of, when it was pointed out to 
me, as the “ Elgin Marbles.” 

The British connexion would probably receive the support of the 
Roman Catholic priests, who have generally been protected in the posses¬ 
sion of the large property originally granted to them by the French go¬ 
vernment. I understand that the priests are considered moral and cha¬ 
ritable ; but they leave the people in ignorance. 

Wages are not so high in Canada as in the United States; but money, 
being less plentiful, goes further. A farmer or a farm-labourer may do 
well in the western portions of Canada, where the best wheat-growing 
lands in America are said to lie. Provisions there are cheap and plentiful; 
but the difficulty for the farmer is to turn into money that portion of his 
produce which he does not consume, as neither the markets nor the roads 
to them are as good as those of the United States, and the steam-boats on 
the St. Lawrence charge highly for the conveyance of stock. A man, 
therefore, who settles in Canada, should be slow to part with his money, 
knowing that he will have a great difficulty in getting it back again; 
but, if cautious in this respect, he will probably do well. 

At a table d'hote in Montreal I sat next a gentleman advanced in 
years, a magistrate, and person of great intelligence and considerable 
property, farming his own estate on the Ottawa River. It was his 
honourable boast that as a boy he had arrived in Canada, from the 
Western Islands of Scotland, with only one shilling in his pocket. He 
informed me that on his farm he payed his male labourers from 25/. to 
30/.* a year, with their board, giving them four meals a day ; and added, 
that, what with making potash, fencing, &c., in the winter, he contrived 
to keep his men employed all the year round. He was satisfied with Lord 
Elgin, and well pleased with the English connexion. 

I will add another anecdote of a Highlander. The tourist in Scotland 
has probably seen a small river-island, near the village of Killen, where 
sleep the rude forefathers of the clan of Macnab. Its chieftain having 
sold his land to the Marquis of Breadalbane, the Marquis of Carrabas of 
the neighbourhood, migrated to Canada in the early part of this century, 
taking with him the greater part of his little clan. It was told me that 
the chief, attempting to transfer his hereditary dignity from the Old 
World to the New, left on Sir Allan Macnab a card, on which his name 
was written as “ The Macnab and that thereupon Sir Allan wrote upon 
a card, “ The other Macnab,” and left it in return. 

On the 1st day of October I entered New England, and passed 
through the states of Vermont and New Hampshire to Massachusetts. 

Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley, in her very interesting “ Travels in 
the United States,” asserts, and with good grounds, that “ Massachusetts 
boasts of Mr. Webster as one of her children.” But he is a child of Mas¬ 
sachusetts by adoption, and not by birth ; for he was born, and spent his 
boyhood, in New Hampshire. I believe the same distinguished authoress 
alludes to, and quotes rather loosely, a sentence from one of the speeches 
of Mr. Webster, which deserves, from its magnificence, to be presented 


* I presume of Canadian currency, in which four dollars, or a trifle more than 
sixteen shillings English money, make a pound. 



15 


Recollections of North America, hi 1849 - 50 - 51 . 

with accuracy. After stating that, in the attempt to impose taxes without 
granting representation, the Americans saw the germ of an unjust power, 
the great orator adds: “ On this question of principle, while actual suf¬ 
fering was yet far off, they raised their flag against a power to which, for 
purposes of foreign conquest and subjugation, Rome, in the height of her 
glory, is not to be compared; a power which has dotted over the surface 
of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts—whose 
morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the 
hours, circles the earth daily with one continuous and unbroken strain of 
the martial airs of England.” 

In 1830, Mr. Webster’s oratorical powers were put to their severest 
test. He had spoken in the United States’ senate, and Mr. Hayne, a 
senator of great distinction, from South Carolina, had been pitted against 
him to answer. Mr. Hayne’s speech was agreed by the friends of both 
sides to be most successful; and all parties said that poor Webster was 
smashed and done for. But Mr. Webster proved to be one, 

That, where the meaner faint, can only feel; 

and, ever since his reply, he has been regarded as the ablest speaker in 
the United States ; and is, perhaps, at this day, the most impressive living 
orator that wields the English language. 

Some years ago, Mr. Webster visited England, and it would be interest¬ 
ing to learn what he thought of the English speakers. His opinion of 
those in the House of Commons I did not hear; but, after his return, he 
told his Boston friends, the best four speakers in the Honse of Lords were 
Lord Brougham, Lord Lyndhurst, the Bishop of Exeter, and the Bishop 
of London. 

But I must revert to my own tour. When I last took my bearings, I 
was in the New England railway “ cars,” bound for the state of Massa¬ 
chusetts. I stopped at its chief manufacturing city, Lowell. 

To the philanthropist, Lowell is the most interesting city in the world ; 
proving, as it does, that the manufacturing system need not produce the 
moral or physical degradation of the operative. The greatest precautions 
have been taken to render it here the parent of as much good, and as little 
evil, as possible to those employed. The zeal of friends—the warning of 
enemies—have conduced to the same result. The whole ground on which 
the factories are built belonged originally, and the magnificent waterworks 
by which all the mills, cotton, carpeting, calico-printing, &c., are supplied, 
still belong to one corporation ; and certain general rules are observed by 
\ all the companies using the ground and the water of that corporation. 
According to these, an operative dismissed for misconduct from one mill 
is never employed in another. Each company possesses long rows, or 
“ blocks,” of boarding-houses, some for males, some for females. Respect¬ 
able persons are sought out, upon whom dependence can be placed, to 
exercise a supervision on the morals of the boarders. To these the 
lodging-houses are let at very low rents, averaging only from one half to 
a third of those produced in other portions of the city by similar houses. 
In return, the board charged weekly to the mill operatives, who alone, 
unless by special permission, are to be taken in, is very small—being 1* 
dollar 75 cents for a man, and 1 dollar 25 cents for a woman, the week. 

• An English sovereign is worth 4 dollars 84 cents. A cent is worth about an 
English halfpenny. 



16 


Recollections of North America , in 1849-50-51. 

It was stated that the average earnings, after deducting board, were—of a 
man 4 dollars 80 cents, and of a woman 2 dollars, the week. But, in 
some cotton-mills there, called the Merrimack mills, one remarkably good 
work-woman, who had long made, besides the price of her board, 6 dollars 
each week, was pointed out to me. The boarding-housekeepers are re¬ 
quired to prohibit intoxicating liquids, to lock the outer doors at ten 
o’clock at night, and to see, as far as may be, that on Sunday the opera¬ 
tives attend some place of public worship. All persons working in a mill 
are compelled to lodge in one of its boarding-houses, unless they obtain 
an exemption under special circumstances, such as having friends living 
in the city. It had previously been told me that the factory girls spent 
too much on their dress ; but, though they were generally dressed with 
neatness when working in the factories, and with smartness on Sundays, 
I never saw anything ludicrous or extravagant in their appearance. I was 
at Lowell on a Sunday, and went to one of the churches, where was a 
large and well-conducted congregation, of which, I believe, a considerable 
proportion were factory girls. In Massachusetts there is no act of the 
state legislature limiting the hours of labour; but in the adjoining state 
of New Hampshire, a ten hours bill has been carried. In the manufac¬ 
turing town, however, of Manchester, in the latter state, its provisions 
have been evaded, as the Lowell people told me, by means of special 
agreements with the operatives. The manufacturing population of Lowell 
is not like the corresponding population in England—stationary. To 
Lowell a girl comes from the country, and works for three or four years 
in a mill; sometimes to support herself, sometimes to assist her parents, 
and often that, when she marries, she may have more than her face for 
her fortune. When the mills are out of work, she generally returns with 
a full purse and good character to her old home; which all along she has 
continued occasionally to visit. Whereas our operatives, having no other 
home to which to go, must remain idly in the town, with little advantage 
to themselves, and less to the neighbourhood, waiting for the mills to be 
once more set to work. The New England people greatly prefer working 
in factories to going into service. Hence the domestic servants there are 
principally supplied from the Irish and the free negroes; but these two 
races do not agree well together. 

The “ public,” that is the free, schools of Lowell, as of Massachusetts 
generally, are excellent. It is, I understand, considered in New England, 
and most properly so, to be no degradation for a young lady of excellent 
social position, who may fancy that such is her vocation, to teach in a 
public school as a salaried schoolmistress. There are three classes of 
schools in Massachusetts in which children are educated free of expense. 
They are called the primary, the grammar, and the high schools. In 
the lowest the boys and girls are educated together by females. When 
they rise to the higher schools they are separated ; and the sex of the 
teacher follows that of the pupil. And teaching in the common school¬ 
rooms of Massachusetts you may see young ladies with acquirements, 
manners, and personal attractions, superior to the average of those to be 
found in the fashionable drawing-rooms of a European metropolis. The 
sons of all classes attend the public schools: but these schools are not 
generally frequented by the daughters of wealthy persons. The standard 
of general education is much higher in the northern parts of the United 
States than it is in England. 


17 


Recollections of North America, in 1849 - 50 - 51 . 

On my road from Lowell to Boston I passed through Lexington, where, 
according to the inscription on an obelisk on its common, fell “ the first vic¬ 
tims of British tyranny and oppression, on the morning of the ever memo¬ 
rable 19th of April, An. Dom. 1775. The die was cast!!! The blood of 
these martyrs in the cause of God and their country was the cement of the 
union of these states, then colonies.” And I saw an old gentleman who, 
as a boy, had taken part with the colonists in that fatal and pregnant 
skirmish, and had two relatives and namesakes killed on the field. This 
village gives name in the west to another Lexington. 

Boston, the Athens of America, unites the characteristics possessed by 
Edinburgh, and its port Leith, in the early part of this century. Prescott,* 
Tieknor, Everett, Winthrop, Longfellow, Sparks, Choate, Sumner, Curtis, 
Agassiz, Guyot, shed the variegated lustre of their high intellectual at¬ 
tainments over the capital of the “ Bay State.” But Mr. Bancroft, the 
historian of the United States, has recently removed from hereto the city 
of New York ; where, also, I believe, lives Mr. Bryant, whom the most 
intellectual of his countrymen consider the first of their poets. 

The merchants of Boston are enterprising. They are eager to acquire 
wealth; desiring to show, by the success of their combinations, their supe¬ 
rior intelligence ; but they bestow it on public charities with princely 
liberality. They aspire not, as with us, to found a family, but a hospital. 
Men who inherit wealth do not for the most part prosper, either in the 
free states of the Union or in Canada. They are not from their very 
position thrust prominently into politics or the magistracy ; nor is there 
a class of such men, having fixed habits and modes of living, with whom 
they can amalgamate. The most sensible heads of families in the northern 
cities of the United States have said to me that they were anxious to ob¬ 
serve the bent of the geniuses of their sons, to train them, in correspond¬ 
ence with that, to a business or profession, and to give or leave them 
enough to start them in life, but not enough to make them independent 
of their own exertions. In Boston, the notions of decorum are unusually 
strict. This is not without its disadvantages as well as advantages; for a 
youth, who may have once got the character of being a little wild, loses, 
without the slightest chance of redeeming, his social position. And, as 
the celebrated university of Harvard, sometimes called Cambridge, from a 
village, within five miles of Boston, in which it is situated, collects young 
men from all parts of the Union, there must here be ample temptation to 
get into scrapes. 

The Revere House at Boston is, as far as my experience goes, the best 
hotel in the United States. Apropos to which, I will add a few words 
about the American manner of living at hotels, elsewhere than in the 
watering-places. Every hotel has two entrances, a public and a private 
one. The public entrance is for gentlemen, the private is for ladies and 
those gentlemen who may attend them. It is not usual to take private 

* At the Liverpool custom-house the American copyright edition of Mr. Pres¬ 
cott’s “ History of Ferdinand and Isabella,” for which I had within the previous 
fortnight given six dollars at New York, was taken from me, as Mr. Prescott had 
sold the copyright for England to an English publisher, who had placed the book 
on the custom-house prohibited list. If in the United States a corresponding pri¬ 
vilege were granted to our authors, Mr. Macaulay would be the richer man by 
some thousands of pounds. 

B 







18 


Recollections of North America, in 1849 - 50 - 51 . 

sitting-rooms ; but there is in every hotel a large, comfortable, well- 
furnished drawing-room, for the exclusive use of ladies and those gentle¬ 
men appended to them : and there is a sitting-room, commonly very un¬ 
comfortable, though very comfortable at the Revere House, for all other 
gentlemen. In the large hotels, the ladies and their cavaliers dine often 
in different rooms, and at different hours, and almost always at different 
tables from the gentlemen who have the misfortune to be unattached. 
The dinner hour varies at the best hotels from two to five; but the most 
general dinner hour is three. A gong is sounded all through the hotel, 
to give notice when the meals are ready. At dinner, the waiters put on 
the courses, take off the covers, and remove the courses, altogether; and 
not quietly, but with a great flourish. Abundance of newspapers are 
taken by the hotels for the benefit of their guests. Two dollars a head per 
day is paid for board and lodging at the Revere House, exclusive of wine. 
On their wine the landlords, called in America “proprietors,” make a 
great profit; for they charge two dollars for a quart bottle of good wine 
of the ordinary descriptions. They would, probably, in the end, make 
more by their wine, if they charged less ; as the majority of persons now 
do not call for it at all. You may have private sitting-rooms and meals 
if you like ; but you must pay very dearly for your exclusiveness. The 
hotel accommodation at the great cities is not sufficient for the public 
demand; and, therefore, the “proprietor,” who assigns you a good room, 
confers, rather than receives, a favour. As soon as you arrive at an hotel 
you should enter in a book your name and residence. Opposite to them 
will immediately be written the number of your bedroom ; and you will 
soon learn not to be surprised when the numerals are hundreds. Boots 
is the only servant who has a positive claim upon your purse ; but, if you 
stay any length of time, or receive from a chambermaid or waiter any 
particular attention, it is common to give them each a trifle as a matter of 
favour. What an improvement upon the English system of exorbitant 
payment to (substantially charges for) hotel servants ! In almost every 
hotel there is, as far as possible removed from the drawing-room, a bar¬ 
room, where liquors, and all sorts of preparations from them are sold. In 
most parts of the country, and particularly in the south and west, it is 
the custom, and especially with young men, to treat each other at the bar. 
One young man asks his male friends to take a drink, and pays for all. 
The next time any of them meet him, he is asked in return. The original 
motive, probably, in both cases is kindness and hospitality; but a habit of 
drinking may be thus produced. Nor can it be doubted that the bar¬ 
room has been, to many a* noble-hearted young fellow, the vestibule to the 
grave. To treat at a bar is in England considered ungentlemanlike. 
Would to God it were so throughout the United States ! 

But the space which I have occupied warns me that I shoidd think of 
drawing my article to a conclusion, though some of the more prominent 
subjects of interest remain to be noticed. 

More than once have I visited all the principal “ Atlantic” cities ; and 
in the spring of 1850 I steamed up, and in the commencement of the 
following winter I steamed down, the Ohio and the southern Mississippi. 

Of the Atlantic cities, proceeding southward from Boston, I will first 
mention New Haven, in the State of Connecticut. It contains the 
university of Yale College, which is adorned by a collection of historical 



19 


Recollections of North America, in 1849 - 50 - 51 . 


paintings and valuable minerals, and by the cabinet and conversation of 
the venerable Professor Silliman. One sweet, calm summer’s night, as I 
was passing in a steamer through Long Island Sound, which flows 
between New Haven and New \ork, the idea of scribbling a few verses 
occurred to me. May I venture to transcribe the lines ?— 

The ripple it trembles and kisses the strand. 

To the sea-weed bends loving the bough from the land ; 

And in silence the trees with their arms interlace. 

As we glide past the hills that the ocean embrace. 

The moon ’mid the stars, sure she looks like a bride. 

Who loves to see glitter her maids by her side : 

She’s too kind to outshine her young sisters that pass, 

And smile on the ocean, like girls on their glass. 

And old Ocean, he smoothes down bis billow the while, 

To reflect on bis surface their delicate smile ; 

But broad gleams the moon’s image his bosom above, 

’Tis for her throbs in tides the strong pulse of his love. 

Let us now proceed from New York by “the cars” to Philadelphia* 
In the “ Quaker City',” as might be supposed, ease and comfort seem 
more regarded than show. The society is very agreeable, aud the pre¬ 
vailing taste rather literary, though far from pedantic. In no other city 
of the Union does the female voice so much resemble that of England. 
It is more sweet than that of New York, less sweet than that of Virginia. 
I was introduced to a lady of the Jewish persuasion, residing in this city, 
from whom Sir Walter Scott is said to have drawn, on the information 
of Mr. Washington Irving, his character of Rebecca. Here a club of dis¬ 
tinguished gentlemen of the city, meeting in each other’s houses, assem¬ 
bles every Saturday evening in the spring. The members have the 
privilege of bringing strangers; and often, by their kiuduess in using it, 
they give them a general and very’ agreeable introduction to society. 
The meetings are called “ Wistar Parties,” in honour of their founder. 
Respecting Philadelphia, I will only add that, though in a state of com¬ 
mercial prosperity, it does not grow as rapidly as its enterprising neigh¬ 
bours on either side, New York and Baltimore. 

Baltimore is the first important city in a slave-owning state that the 
traveller from the north reaches. The houses of the principal gentry are 
very large, as much for the accommodation of the numerous slaves as the 
master; and behind these houses are substantial out-buildings, in which 
the married domestic slaves have separate bedrooms assigned them. The 
word “ slave” is banished from the vocabulary' of a Southern, and “ ser¬ 
vant” is substituted in its stead. On the hackney ed subject of slavery 
there is not space to enter; but I am bound in candour to state, that, 
having spent altogether nearly a year in the slave-owning states, I have 
not seen one single case in which any' slave has been treated with cruelty 
by his master or his master’s agent; and I have universally found the 
domestic slaves treated with what, were it shown in England to our own 
servants, of the same race with ourselves, would be considered unreasonable 
indulgence. Let who may support a came, abstractedly good, with pious 
frauds ; I will not. 

From Baltimore a two hours’ journey on the railroad takes you to 


l 



20 


Recollections of North America , in 1849-50-51. 

Washington. The federal city is most happily raised above the waves of 
popular agitation by its entire want of manufacturing or commercial im¬ 
portance. It is the conception of a great city very partially executed. Its 
public buildings are magnificent, its streets are broad; but its private 
houses are irregular, poor, and often of wood. If this picture does not 
quite realise the impression which an American entertains of his national 
capital, he may perhaps forgive me when I add that it corresponds almost 
exactly with the description given by Montesquieu of Rome, long before 
it had been adorned and enslaved by the Caesars : “ Les maisons etoient 
plac^es sans ordre et tres petites; car les hommes, toujours au travail ou 
dans la place publique, ne se tenoient gu&re dans les maisons. Mais la 
grandeur de Rome parut bientot dans ses edifices publics. On commen- 
$oit deja & b&tir la ville 6ternelle.” 

When staying at different times in Washington, I frequently attended 
the United States senate, which is not “ degraded” from the position of 
the most dignified and intellectual legislative assembly in the world by 
the open “ reception of a regular stipend”*—a custom which it derived 
from the English parliamentary practice of an age when lands were not 
sold to railway companies, nor allotments of shares received from railway 
companies, by members of either house ! 

In February, 1850, I was present in the senate house, when Mr. Clay 
made his great statesmanlike and conciliatory speech, with the hope 
(which I trust will prove to have been entirely realised) of producing a 
compromise between the opposing interests and prejudices of the northern 
and southern states. In the following March, I was present, when Mr. 
* c ti. Walker, the distinguished senator from Wisconsin, with that kindness of 
feeling with which he has recently won so many hearts in England, re¬ 
signed his claim on the floor to Mr. Webster; who rose and delivered a 
; f f i speech on the compromise, of which the manner and the matter were 
worthy of the best days of the Roman senate. I was present, too, on the 
17th of July, in the same year, when Mr. Webster made another great 
speech on the compromise, in which his remarks on the subject of dicta¬ 
tion by the represented to the representative are especially worthy of the 
consideration of the statesman. 

From Washington, continuing on the east side of the United States, 
and proceeding southward, we arrive at Richmond, the capital of Vir¬ 
ginia. This handsome city was named from its resemblance in situation 
to Richmond, in Surrey, which had been named by King Henry VII., 
in honour of his castle and earldom of Richmond, in Yorkshire. And it is 
satisfactory that some place in the New World should derive its name, how¬ 
ever indirectly, from him under whose auspices the European foot was first 
planted by Cabot on the continent of America. Richmond, viewed socially, 
reminded me of an English cathedral city in an agricultural district; but it 
has the advantage of being the seat of a state legislature and the residence 


* “ The National Assembly [of France] was degraded by the reception of a 
regular stipend”!—Leading Article of the Times, 10 December, 1851. A United 
States senator is paid 8 dollars a day during the sitting of Congress. A judge of 
the Supreme Court of the United States receives 6000 dollars, or a little more 
than 1200/. a year. The President of the United States receives 20,000 dollars, 
or a little more than 4000/. a year, and is provided with a house. It is to be re¬ 
gretted that in the United States no pensions are given to retiring judges. 


> 




21 


Recollections of North America , in 1849-50-51. 

of an accomplished bar. Whilst I was at Richmond, a convention was held 
there, to form a new state constitution : on the basis on which future re¬ 
presentatives should be elected the eastern and western members differed; 
and the views of one party were advocated by Mr. Stanard, and of the 
other by Mr. Somers, in speeches of great ability. In personal appear¬ 
ance, the members of the convention resembled a large bench of West 
Riding magistrates assembled at Pontefract sessions. 

From Richmond, proceeding south, we arrive at Charleston, the principal 
city of South Carolina; for whose gallant sons and fair daughters I have 
too much regard not to hope (as indeed I believe) that they will not much 
longer feel bound to trouble themselves or the Union with projects of 
secession. In South Carolina I spent some time very agreeably under 
the hospitable roof of an opulent rice-planter. It is in the slave-holding 
states only that you meet with large landed properties, there called plan¬ 
tations. The planter of consideration is a compound of the feudal baron, 
the well-bred English country gentleman, and the farmer. Those who 
would know something of life on a plantation may be referred to an inte¬ 
resting novel by Mrs. Gilman, of Charleston, called “ Recollections of a 
Southern Matron,” and published in New York. 

Let us now pass in a south-westerly direction to New Orleans, the 
great port of the Valley of the Mississippi—the future bread-basket of 
the world. 

I happened to be there on the 8th of January, 1850, the thirty-fifth 
anniversary of the battle of New Orleans. An opportunity for proces¬ 
sions and speeches is, in the United States, seldom lost. Such national 
celebrations must be useful in keeping up patriotism to fever heat; but 
the speeches delivered by the mob-orators sometimes evince an extra¬ 
ordinary bad taste, and must be intensely humiliating to the more 
polished of their countrymen. Of such a nature were some of the 
addresses made at New Orleans on this occasion. I will add a few words, 
therefore, on the victory of New Orleans. 

On the morning of the 8th of January, 1815, the forces under General 
Jackson have been computed to have been about 20,000 men, principally 
recruits; those of Sir Edward Pakenham about 8000, principally veterans 
General Jackson’s camp, lying between New Orleans and the British army, 
was strongly fortified by ditches, by high outworks, and by a breastwork 
made of cotton bales. The British in vain had endeavoured to provoke 
the Americans to leave their camp, and engage in open fight. The 
camp they then determined to storm. Now General Jackson had consulted 
General Adair, the commander of the Kentucky volunteers, as to what would 
probably be the British mode of attack, and how it should be repelled. 
General Adair had answered that he knew the material of which the 
British army was composed, and that there was no mode of repelling the 
troops but killing them, and that he presumed an assault would be 
made at night; and in several divisions, in order to divert attention from 
that which should be the principal point of attack. The commander-in¬ 
chief replied: “ Then do you act as you may think best; you will re¬ 
ceive no orders from me.” In the grey of morning, before daybreak, the 
British came to the assault in three divisions : and General Adair put his 
ear to the ground; and, having heard in what direction the tread of the 
greatest number of feet came, there directed his unerring Kentucky 


22 


Recollections of North America , in 1849-50-51. 

riflemen.* But the British colonel, to whom the duty had been assigned 
of seeing that the scaling implements were brought up, had forgotten it. 
Yet, without these, three times did the British advance to the works ; and 
three times were the first ranks swept away to a man by the fire of an unseen 
foe. At length they retired unpursued ; their commander-in-chief being 
killed, and two of their generals wounded, one mortally, and about 2000, 
officers and men, having been killed or wounded. On burying the dead, 
nearly a thousand bodies in British uniforms, without one American 
corpse among them, were found within the space of a few hundred 
yards. One soldier succeeded in getting to the top of the innermost 
works, and he expired of his wounds the next day. His dying request 
was that his colonel might be informed that he had mounted the ram- 
part.j' It was complied with by the Americans, by whom, indeed, the 
wounded were very kindly treated. I endeavoured in vain to learn his 
name. 

And now a word to the people of New Orleans. 

I had rather lie with the slaughtered in the dank swamp below your 
city, than—as a son of those who took their aim from behind a rampart 
of cotton bales with the cool deliberation of perfect safety—be the man to 
insult and trample upon the graves of heroes. Siste! Heroes calcas! 
If not,—let the Persians exult in Thermopylae ! 

The battle of New Orleans was the last of those conflicts—may it ever 
continue to be the last—in which we were engaged with our American 
kindred. The impulses of the heart, and the reasonings of the head, alike 
call for our fraternal union ; and on that, perhaps, under Providence, may 
hang for untold ages the constitutional liberties of the human race. 

If the tourist should desire to proceed from New Orleans to New York 
by “ the western waters,” he may ascend the Mississippi and Ohio rivers 
to Pittsburg, in magnificent steam-boats, with an uninterrupted navigation 
of 2025 miles; and then, from Pittsburg may proceed, in a journey of 
about two days and nights, partly by coaches and partly by railroad-cars, 
to the great commercial city of “ the Empire State.” 

The traveller, according to this route, leaving the sugar plantations of 
Louisiana, with their adjacent orange groves, and their evergreen oaks, the 
branches of which are laden with a long grey moss, resembling at a dis¬ 
tance the nets of fishermen hung to dry, soon arrives at “ the bluff,” or 
high bank, of Natches ; where fields of cotton take the place of those of 
sugar-cane, and where are country houses, with grounds kept in as good 
order as those around an English gentleman’s seat. He has been told of 
the snags, and sandbanks, and double-pressure engine-boilers, which 
endanger him who confides himself to the Mississippi; but has dis¬ 
regarded the warnings. Yet at Natches he remembers with a sigh, that 
he is near the spot, where, worn out by disease, fatigue, and disappoint¬ 
ment, died, on the 21st of May, 1542, Ferdinand de Soto; and that, 
ominously for his race, the discoverer of the Mississippi was buried beneath 
its waters. 

The most wonderful characteristic of this great river is, that, for much 
more than a thousand miles, it continues, in its progress, to swallow up 

* The facts connected with General Adair I was told by his son-in-law, a dis¬ 
tinguished judge of one of the United States’ courts. 

t Idem. 



Recollections of North America , in 1849-50-51. 


23 


immense rivers without disclosing on its surface the slightest accession to 
its mighty bulk. Along the banks of its southern portion, grows, self- 
planted, in the greatest abundance, a tree, called the cotton-wood, some¬ 
thing resembling our lime-tree. It is a regular business to cut and stack 
this wood, and then to sell it at so much a cord to the steam-boats to 
burn in their furnaces. Fortunately it is of most rapid growth, or the 
supply could not equal the demand. I was assured (however paradoxical 
it may seem) that a steamer makes her journey more rapidly up than down 
this river; for every time that, in descending, she has to stop, she must 
make a wide sweep in order to bring her head up against the stream. 
The water is muddy, and of a leaden colour, but is considered very whole¬ 
some. And the paternal duties of “ the father of waters” seem to be more 
extended than his name denotes, as the beverage (if it may be whispered 
without scandal) is said also to be very prolific. 

After leaving the southern Mississippi, with its generally low banks of 
rich alluvial soil, ten or twelve feet in thickness, and entering the hilly, 
yet not mountainous, district watered by the beautiful Ohio, we lose sight 
of cotton-fields, but a fine maize-growing and grazing country presents 
itself to the view. 

Space forbids me to describe the three great cities of the Ohio, Louis¬ 
ville, Cincinnati, and Pittsburg ; the last of which, being in a neighbour¬ 
hood where coal and iron are to be procured, has become the Birming¬ 
ham of America. Neither may I dilate upon the warm true hearts and 
open hands of Kentucky ; nor the hospitable roofs of its sweet inland 
town of Lexington, surrounded by ^he straightest and tallest oaks and 
the richest grass* 6 that I ever saw, and honoured by having its neighbour¬ 
hood selected for his residence by the venerable statesman Mr. Clay. 
I will, however, just add a few remarks on a business to which we have 
nothing parallel in England, and turn one lingering retrospect to my im¬ 
pressions of the Mammoth Cave. 

In the rich lands of the state of Kentucky and the State of Ohio, 
great quantities of Indian corn, called by the Americans simply “corn” 
par excellence , are raised ; and, in order to save the expense of drawing 
it in waggons a great distance over indifferent roads to Louisville and 
Cincinnati for exportation, the inhabitants keep large droves of pigs, 
called by the Americans “ hogs,” in their woods during the spring and 
summer, and at the end of autumn turn them for a month into the fields 
of Indian corn, to tread down and eat up the crop. This they call 
“ giving the crop legs.” They then, as soon as the first frost of winter 
sets in, drive the fattened animals to their river ports, where they are 
killed, salted, put in barrels, and shipped off. 

On the 5th of September, 1850,1 went over the pork-house of Messrs. 
Jackson, Owsley, and Co., in Louisville. They were then killing 1400 
pigs a day, but they had been killing as many as 2000 pigs, and can 
kill as many as 2500, a day. The pigs were driven up to a narrow point, 
where they were let into a raised slaughter-house one by one. There 
they immediately received a violent blow on the head (just behind the 

* This grass, from its tint, is commonly spoken of as “ the blue grass of Ken¬ 
tucky.” It rises spontaneously when the undergrowth of cane has been cleared 
away from the woods. I have been told that after a time it dies or changes its 
qualities; but this curious statement I had not an opportunity of satisfactorily 
authenticating. 




24 


Recollections of North America, in 1849-50-51. 

ear, I believe) from a hammer, having a circular iron or leaden head, 
when—how unlike, alas! the killing of a pig with us—they “ died, and 
made no sign.” As soon as they fell, a knife was stuck into their necks 
to make them bleed. They were then pushed forward into a large 
trough of hot water, and deprived of their bristles by scraping ; then 
taken out at the other end, disembowelled, passed on to another portion 
of the building, and hung up to cool. The next day they were in a 
minute cut up, and packed with salt in barrels, for exportation to New 
Orleans and New York—thence to be distributed over the world. 

From Louisville, a sixteen or eighteen hours’ journey takes the tourist 
to “ the mammoth cave of Kentucky.” It is situated in a hilly district of 
limestone rock; and has waters where swim fish, in which, through the 
reasonable thriftfulness of nature, that bestows nothing in vain, the eye 
has never been developed, but is entirely covered beneath the skin.—Would 
their descendants, if removed into the light, obtain their sight ? Ay! 
and would the foot, the skin, the hair, the skull, and the intellect of the 
negro, if his race were for countless ages engrafted on Europe, develop 
the European peculiarities ?—Well, in the mammoth cave I proceeded by 
torchlight nine miles under ground, occasionally in boats across rivers, but 
mostly on dry land. It was sometimes rising to the height of hun¬ 
dreds of feet, sometimes so low that I had to stoop in walking; at 
one time awful with solemn aisles filled with stalactite pillars, at another 
time terrible with rocky roofs which had fallen, or were threatening to 
fall; it was one while black with manganese, another while resplendent 
with gypsum spars. Now Tartarus—now Elysium—now Pandemonium 
—now fairyland—it gives the traveller new ideas, and illustrates old ones. 

In my expedition I was accompanied by a negro slave of considerable 
intelligence, who acts as guide; and who, according to the will of his late 
master, Dr. Croghan, is shortly to be emancipated and sent to Liberia. 
He had been one of an exploring party that had discovered in the cave 
a river, which has been named the Echo River. His voice is good ; 
and, as we crossed that river, he sang a song, which was exquisitely re¬ 
verberated. I asked him if he should not, when in Africa, often think of 
the mammoth cave ; he answered, in a voice of much feeling, “ Often.” 
Suggested by these incidents, the few following lines were written by me, 
as “ Stephen’s Adieu to the Echo of the Mammoth Cave.” They have 
been published by the editor of the Washington National Intelligencer , 
to whom they were given by one of my friends : 

The silent darkness of the grave 
Had held thee, Echo! ages bound, 

When first I waked thee in thy cave 

And taught thee love notes sound for sound. 

I now must seek far Afric’s lands 
Across the broad Atlantic sea ; 

Yet ’neath her palms, or ’mid her sands, 

Sweet songstress ! I will think of thee. 

But thou, thou sportive light coquette, 

Wilt answer each gay passing rover. 

With voice as sweet as ever yet 

Thou breathedst on thy first fond lover. 

(From the New Monthly Magazine.) 


RECOLLECTIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, 

in 1849-50-51. 

PART II. 


15Y IV..E. SURTEES, D.C.L. 


( 25 ) 


RECOLLECTIONS OF NORTH AMERICA, IN 1849-50-51. 

BY. W. E. SURTEES, D.C.L. 

Part II. 

The two places of North America, in which I found the greatest 
novelty, were the mammoth cave in Kentucky and the island of Cuba. 
Each of these seemed a new and distinct world of itself; in each I found 
a ground, an atmosphere, and a firmament, unlike what 1 had ever known 
before. 

On the 1st of April, 1850, I embarked at Charleston in the steam-ship 
Isabel , for Cuba; to which the voyage is usually performed in about four 
days. But before bidding adieu, for a time at least, to the United States, 
I will indulge in some recollections of South Carolina, and of a distin¬ 
guished personage, who, though enrolled by the muse of history amongst 
the national worthies, was more especially honoured in this his native 
state. 

On that morning the flags in the harbour of Charleston were drooping 
half-mast high for the death of Mr. Calhoun, which had just been an¬ 
nounced by electric telegraph from Washington. Mr. Calhoun, one of 
the senators returned by South Carolina to Congress, was possessed of an 
intellect unusually logical and wonderfully rapid ; had great experience 
in public affairs, having filled with the highest credit the situation of 
secretary-at-war, and twice been elected to the second office in the nation, 
the office of vice-president; and, as leader of the democratic party, and 
champion of what in the South are called “ Southern Rights,” had often 
in the senate been opposed to Mr. Webster ; who, even were he—what 
the late Mr. Sidney Smith said no man could be—“ as clever* as he looks,” 
must have felt on these occasions, that, in the intellectual combat, he 
might joy in a “foeman worthy of his steel.” Those who questioned Mr. 
Calhoun’s judgment, never questioned his disinterested sincerity ; for, 
rince the death of Washington, the purity, both in public and private life, 
of no other statesman has been more universally acknowledged than his. 
Mr. Calhoun’s forehead was high and prominent, though it seemed to me 
scarcely so high or so full as that of Mr. Webster; nor had it that “ pent¬ 
house” projection at the eyebrow, which is the most striking characteris¬ 
tic of Mr. Clay’s face, and which phrenologists would say was a sure sign 
of the acuteness of the perceptive faculties, and of that tact which the 
patriotic senator from Kentucky has often evinced in the management of 
men and parties. When I saw Mr. Calhoun, his large, bony, and manly 
face was wasted by consumption, and pallid with the shadow of coming 
death; but intelligence beamed from every feature and every line. His 
eye was very luminous. His hair, which was nearly white (for he was 
within three years of seventy), bristled up from the sides and top of his 
head like the quills of a porcupine.! This gave something of a wildness 
to his expression, which, however, was often sunned away by a winning 

* In some portions of the United States “clever” is understood as meaning 
weakly amiable, or, in slang language, “ soft.” I will not presume to anticipate 
the verdict of future critics, and affirm that this was the sense in which it was 
applied by Mr. Sidney Smith to Mr. Webster.- 

f In one of the public buildings of Charleston, there is a statue of Mr. Calhoun 
by Mr. Power, in which his hair is represented as having a wavy curl. 

c 



26 


Recollections of North America, in 1849-50-51. 

smile. His mouth was wide; but his thin and compressed upper and under 
lip indicated a man— 

Master of others’ passions and his own. 

Mr. Calhoun, like most of the prominent politicians in the United 
States, belonged to the profession of the law—a profession whose indi¬ 
vidual members do not here realise a property at all commensurate to 
the vast influence which they exercise. But if they possess less wealth, 
they care less for its possession, than do the mercantile classes. r l heir 
standing depends upon other circumstances; and it is one of the most 
creditable features in the country that it should be so. dhey and their 
families seem to owe their position to their simplicity, their integrity, 
their intelligence, and their cultivation. Rather more than a fortnight 
before his death, Mr. Calhoun, on whom I had left a letter of introduc¬ 
tion, wrote, stating that he was too ill to call on me, but requesting me 
to call on him at the boarding-house in Washington, where he had 
taken up his quarters. He received me in a large room, which he 
seemed to use as a sitting-room as well as bedroom, unless when occu¬ 
pying the public drawing-room of the house. His manner was open and 
friendly; and, indeed, such were the manners which I invariably found 
amongst those of the leading American statesmen, to whom, at Wash¬ 
ington, I had the honour of being introduced. He remarked upon the 
dangers that menaced the Union, and rather despondingly.* Alluding, 
I presume, to the large preponderance which the members from the non¬ 
slave-holding states had already acquired in the national house of repre¬ 
sentatives, and the preponderance which, were California admitted as a 
non-slave-holding state, they w T ould acquire in the senate, he spoke of 
the balance of powder of the different interests as being destroyed; and 
declared that there was little chance of maintaining the Union, unless 
some efficient check should be provided, by which one interest should be 
protected from the aggression of another; and added, that in England 
this balance or check was effected by means of our House of Lords. He 
was under a state of considerable excitement; appeared feverish; and 
spoke loudly and w'ith the greatest rapidity. He did not volunteer to 
explain how he thought this protective check should be created; nor did 
I consider it right then to ask him; and I may not now presume to 
throw outaconjeeture. But time will probably reveal his ideas on this 
subject; for he has left behind him the manuscript of a work on govern¬ 
ment, which the state of South Carolina has desired the privilege of 
publishing at its own expense. Mr. Calhoun was so kind as to ask me 
to call again; but, considering his state of health, I thought that I had 
no right to indulge myself in the gratification which another visit w’ould 
have afforded me. 

But it is time that I should turn from the senator to the state which 
he represented, and to the city where he was adored. 

The imprisonment, by the state authorities, of all free “ coloured” 
persons who may arrive in Charleston in ships, whether they be citizens 
of the northern states, of the Union, or of foreign countries, has, of late 
years, been a subject of complaint both at home and abroad. In South 


It must, of course, be recollected that his own illness might lead him to take 
a dark and contracted view of the political horizon. 




27 


Recollections of North America , in 1849-50-51. 

Carolina the u coloured” is more numerous than the white population ; 
and, as it was feared, and probably with reason, that the more fanatical 
of the emancipationists would employ free stranger negroes to excite the 
slaves to rise against their masters, any free person “ of colour” is, on 
the arrival of a ship, arrested and confined in prison, in order to prevent 
him from holding a dangerous intercourse with the slaves; but, when 
the vessel that brought him is about to sail, he is returned to it. 

From Massachusetts, some years ago, an active emancipationist came 
to Charleston to reside. His object was that he might be on the spot to 
maintain the rights of any imprisoned negro citizen of his state, by suing 
out a writ of habeas corpus , not from one of the courts of the state of 
South Carolina, but from the local branch of the Court of the United 
States there established. This, as the party aggrieved belonged to a dif¬ 
ferent state from that in which the grievance occurred, he would, according 
to the national constitution, have had a right to do. But before he had 
effected anything, he received a hint that, if he would save himself from 
popular violence, he had better speedily take his departure; and, having 
that zeal which, in so good a cause, “ would live to fight another day,” 
he complied with the suggestion. The legislature of South Carolina, no 
doubt, has substantial reasons, connected with public safety, for the law 
that it has passed; and none but the worst of social incendiaries would 
desire that the emancipation of slaves should be attempted—and there it 
could not succeed—through midnight massacre and servile war. I have 
an impression, the correctness of which I have not at this moment the 
means of ascertaining, that the free “ coloured” sailors from other states 
and nations have here to be supported in prison at the expense of the ship 
which may have brought them ; but, certainly, if the citizens of “ the 
Palmetto State” must needs take these precautions for their own security, 
they should take them at their own expense. 

Amongst the churches at Charleston is one said to have been built at 
the time, and from the plan, of Sir Christopher Wren, and which resembles 
in style the churches with Grecian porticos erected in London by that 
great architect. This city has an appearance of age which, in a country 
where almost everything is new^seems venerable. Charleston, Boston, 
and New Orleans are the only cities in the United States in which any 
traces of a past age force themselves on your notice. 

The coast of South Carolina is low, and is fenced in by a number of 
small islands, which often consist of sand only, and grow nothing but the 
palmetto. The palmetto is a small tree, producing its leaves at the top, 
like a palm, but having a fan-like instead of sword-like leaf. Its vood 
is valuable for building wharfs, as it does not rot in the water. It would 
probably, also, be useful in constructing fortifications, as I think, from its 
soft nature, a cannon-ball would bury itself in it, and be stopped, without 
making splinters. Many of the rice-planters have small wooden houses 
on the islands, to which they go, early in May, to spend the summer. 
If they have not a house on an island, they generally have one in the 
pine-forests higher up in the country, in either of which the air, in warm 
weather, is much more wholesome than in the neighbourhood of the rice- 
fields. I believe some of these islands produce a very fine cotton, called 
the sea-island cotton; but all that I saw were barren. 

The principal rice planting is on the low flooded lands by the side of 
the rivers, where the waters are so far from the sea as not to be reached 

c 2 


28 


Recollections of North America, in 1849-50- 


> 1 . 


by the brackish water, and yet so near the sea as to be dammed back l v 
the rising, and let oft' by the ebbing, of the tide. Such lands in the south 
are often covered with a deciduous tree, called a Cyprus, and are then called 
Cyprus swamps. The rice lands there are prepared at great expense. 
They are surrounded with a wide embankment, which is constructed with 
peculiar precautions, in order that the water may not break through it. 
First a trench is dug, exactly in the course of the intended embankment, 
and the soil is thrown on each side. Then the soil is thrown back again, 
and the trench is filled up. Then a large, deep ditch is dug in the inside 
of the field, and the soil, after having been carefully cleared from all roots, 
is piled up upon the soil with which the first trench has been filled up, 
and wooden tunnels-there, I think, called “ trunks”-with doors to let 
the water in and out, are introduced into the bank thus constructed. 

The object of digging the first trench, and then filling it up is, that the 
«oil of the bank may amalgamate from its very foundation, and leave no 
crevices at the bottom; for, if a little water should once percolate, it 
would presently be followed by a stream that would sweep away the bank. 
The reason for excluding roots is lest, when they should decay, they 
might leave a little channel, which the water might penetrate. The 
bank being made a sufficient height, tho fields are cleared, levelled, and 
drained with ditches. Rice fields require at some periods to be flooded, 
and at others to be drained ; and by opening the doors of the tunnels 
you can at high tide flood the fields, and at low tide drain them, when 
you like. Of course, from the district subject to such a mode of culti¬ 
vation, a very unhealthy exhalation must in hot weather arise ; but it is 
not found seriously injurious to the negroes. 

Theft, and the minor offences committed by slaves, are tried and 
punished by the planter’s domestic tribunal; but such offences, as the law 
visits with death, are tried by the public authorities; and when a slave 
is capitally executed, his master receives from the state some pecuniary 
compensation for the loss of his services. In the spring of 1850, at 
New Orleans, an able-bodied male slave, in the prime of life, w r as averaged 
to sell for between 800 and 900 dollars ; and a female slave for between 
700 and 800 dollars. But then the price of cotton was high ; and, with 
the price of cotton, the price of slaves increases. 

A planter is generally most unwilling to sell his slaves; if he parts 
with any, it is usually as a punishment for their own bad conduct, or as a 
last resource to relieve his embarrassments. All must regret that by a 
sale the members of a family may be separated; but it is a satisfaction to 
know that the public feeling of the south protests against such sepa¬ 
rations. 

Many New England farmers have settled on the rich lands of the 
slave-holding states* on the Ohio, in order to cultivate them, not by slave 
labour, but by their own hands, and those of their children. In the state 
of Delaware there is but a very small slave population, and in the state 
of Maryland^ the proportion of slaves to freemen is being every day 


* In Kentucky and the western portion of Virginia. 

f It was thought right that the city of Washington, as the seat of the national 
parliament, should be free from the control of any state legislation; and hence 
the district in which it was situated, called the District of Columbia, was pre¬ 
sented to the national government by the state of Maryland. Lady Emmeline 
Stuart Wortley observes, in her agreeably written tour, that she “ hopes and 



29 


Recollections of North America, in 1849-50-51. 

diminished by European emigration. It is obvious that by peaceable 
state legislation several of these more northern states must, in the time 
of the present generation, become free. It is obvious, too, that the 
absolute and immediate emancipation of the slaves throughout the United 
States, which some desire, would create, and not remove, misery. The 
sad experience which we have gained in our West Indian colonies might 
convince us that personal, like political, freedom requires a long appren¬ 
ticeship. 

I he rice planter has his own principal residence on some more elevated 
ground in the neighbourhood of his rice fields, very likely on a “ bluff” by 
the river; and not far from his own house is a negro village, where his 
“ field hands ” live. Scattered about his estates are several large and 
comfortable cottages, where his overseers, always white men, live. The 
planter’s house is exceedingly comfortable. Nearly all the houses in the 
country are built of wood, and in the south the country houses are often 
raised, like wheat stacks, some feet from the ground, so that under them 
there may be a free ventilation. Comparing the planter to the feudal 
baron, I should liken his overseers to military retainers ; for, in the south, 
unmixed Caucasian blood is, to a certain extent, considered as aristocracy. 
Under the overseers are the drivers, the most trustworthy of the slaves, 
who, not working themselves, have to overlook an allotted number of 
labourers, and report to the overseers those who may be idle. 

In the south, the reception of a visitor is always cordial; and the 
slaves imitate towards you the friendly manners of their master and 
mistress, with a familiarity which amuses, but does not offend, you. The 
familiarity on the other hand of the free negro of the north, not unfre- 
quently partakes of the insolent and offensive. Judging from the man¬ 
ners and appearance of the slaves, agricultural as well as domestic, they 
are a light-hearted and happy people. Besides the comfort of the 
negroes, and the private police regulations of the various plantations, 
there is this remarkable ingredient of security in the slave-holding* 
states,—namely, that the coloured people of mixed blood, whether free or 
slaves, despise the unmitigated Afi ican negro; and, though by law they 
have no privileges superior to his, they attach themselves more willingly 
to the white population, as that from which their most honourable descent 
comes. 

Satisfied w ith the conviction that the blacks are inferior to himself, the 
mulatto wullingly admits his own inferiority to the whites. He compares 
himself with the negro, and enjoys the pride of birth ; and it is but fair 
that he should have some peculiar topic of consolation, for, with his 


thinks slavery will be done away with soon in the District of Columbia;” and 
adds in a note, “since the letters were written, this has taken place.” But I 
must remark that slavery is not at present abolished there. As I understand the 
recent legislation on the compromise question, it abolishes a slave market which 
used to exist in this district, and prohibits permanent residents here from intro¬ 
ducing new slaves; and hence, from the emancipation of slaves, which is constantly 
going on, slavery in the District of Columbia must in time be ’worn out. I will 
here remark, as the w r ork is unknown in England, that the ablest defence of “ the 
peculiar institutions” of the south, which I have met with, is a “Memoir on 
Slavery,” by the late William Harper, Chancellor of South Carolina, which was 
published in the shape of a pamphlet, and has recently been republished at New 
Orleans, in Dr. Bow’s Review. 



30 


Recollections of North America, in 1849-50-51. 


mixed blood, he generally inherits a constitution more fragile than that of 
either the pure Caucasian or African races. 

In warm weather alligators come out of their nests at the sides of 
the rivers, and bask upon the banks; where also a quantity of terrapin, 
a sort of fresh-water turtle, considered good eating, are to be found. 
You here also often see the stork majestically promenading in the rice 
fields. In the south, buzzards are valued as scavengers ; and in Charles¬ 
ton there is a penalty of five dollars for killing one. I have seen there 
as many as twenty buzzards sitting on the roof of the market-place, 
whence, as tame as pigeons in a farm-yard, they would fly down, and, 
almost under the wheels of the carts and the feet of horses that were 
passing, would devour any scrap of meat that was tossed away from the 
butchers’ stalls. Never were buzzards so petted as these ; and, unless 
their having been protected and pampered so long has precluded all 
thought on the subject (which if buzzards have any feelings of humanity 
must be the case), they must suppose that for their roost the roof has 
been raised, and for their dinner the cattle have been slaughtered. 

But at Charleston it is time to hurry on board the Isabel , and, loosen¬ 
ing the cables from the wharf made of palmetto trunks, to steam off on 
our voyage to Cuba. I was unable at Charleston to get any work that 
treated of Cuba: and I am not aware that the English language can 
boast of any work of high merit on this subject, though the island con¬ 
tains ample materials out of which one of interest might be made ; and, 
if it were illustrated by engravings of the architecture and natural 
scenery, it would be all the better. # 

It was on the 1st of April, 1850, that I left Charleston. YVe came 
off Key West, a little island on the coast of Florida, at the entrance of 
the Gulf of Mexico, both to leave and receive mail-bags and passengers. 
Secure in our large steamer, that walked the water superior to the caprices 
of the wind, I often thought of the circumstances under which, in the 
autumn of 1492, Columbus—having, through his enthusiasm and his 
genius, surmounted innumerable discouragements and difficulties, and 
having hoisted his flag in the only one of his three small vessels that was 
decked from end to end—entered, for the first time, these seas, bearing 
with him the destinies of untold millions in the world which he had left, 
and in that which he was to reveal. 


Heu ! quantum fati parva tabella vehit! 


The great object of Columbus was to discover a direct western passage 
to India ; and it is satisfactory to be assured that the united enterprise of 
the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race will, in the present age, 
accomplish,! by canals and railroads across the Isthmus of Panama, the 
chief hope of the Genoese navigator. 

A few hours before arriving at Cuba, you enter the tropics; Cuba was 


inihl h ^ S ^ n i h A C ° mn r n “ men , t 5r?,f ries ofleUers on Cuba, publishing 
inthe New York Chronicle, signed “ D.” and attributed to a gentleman whose 

industry, candour, and poetic feeling would particularly qualify him (could he 
only spare time from his important public aVocations, to pay a lon™visit fo the 
sland and digest the materials that ho had acquired) to do ample ius? ce on a 

larger scale, to the interesting subject. J p justice, on a 

1" The arrangements for obtaining this desirable enrl invo noon f 

tated by the recent “Bulwer treaty,” e been 8 reatl y facili- 




31 


Recollections of North America , in 1849 - 50 - 51 . 

the first of the large islands on which Columbus landed. On the 28th of 
October, 1492, lie came in sight of it. Imagining, then, that he was 
not far from India, he called these islands West Indies, and the red 
men Indians—names which they have still retained. Here the sky is 
more deeply blue, the vault of heaven more lofty, the stars more distinct 
and large, than they appear even in the United States; the sea seems 
hardly less clear by day than the air, or less brilliant with its phosphoric 
sparks by night than the starry firmament. So aerial, so pellucid is the 
deep blue of that water, that no wonder the simple natives of these islands, 
when they first saw the white sails and white crew of Columbus, should 
have supposed that he might have come sailing into that crystal ocean 
from its sister element, the sky. 

The harbour of Havana is a wide, deep basin, with a narrow channel 
or neck opening into the sea. The basin is not the outlet of a river, and 
therefore is not liable to have bars formed at its mouth. The neck is 
commanded by strong forts on each side; and on the east side by a pre¬ 
cipitous hill crowned by a castle, called the Morro. The houses here are 
always flat-roofed, that they may be less exposed to hurricanes; as, in 
Quebec, they have steep slanting roofs, that the snow may slide off them. 
They are often of but one story high, a circumstance which gives the 
greater prominence to the principal buildings of the city. The windows 
never have glass sashes; but, outside, have prison-like iron bars, which, 
admitting the breezes, exclude less welcome intrusion. Inside there are 
shutters. At the top of these shutters is sometimes one small glass pane, 
with a sort of little cupboard door over it, which, were it open and the 
shutters shut, would give light to the room, but not enable the inmates to 
see anything, out of the house, lower than a bird on the wing; so rarely 
in that climate must there be occasion to exclude the outward air. The 
streets are narrow, but clean. The names of the shopkeepers, instead of 
being painted over their doors, are inserted into long narrow flags, which 
are stretched across the street from side to side by cords and pulleys. This 
succession of gay draperies above your head has a pleasing, but very 
foreign effect, and casts upon your sunny path frequent stripes of shade. 
Some of the fine old-fashioned houses have in front a Moorish archway, 
within which are large folding gates, opening upon an entrance hall, be¬ 
yond which is another Moorish archway of a different shape, with other 
gates opening into an arched cloister bounding the four sides of a court¬ 
yard in the centre of the building; while in the middle of this court-yard 
there is a fountain. In such buildings the perspective is very imposing. 

I had never previously, except in drawings, seen anything resembling 
these arches. Their designs might have been copied from the halls of 
the Alhambra by the grandsons of those chivalrous warriors of the best 
days of Spain, who strove to suppress the signs of their exultation, when, 
on the 2nd of January, 1492, the exiled Bobadil delivered to King Ferdi¬ 
nand the keys of the palace, which had been that of his ancestors, and 
until then was his. The principal sitting-rooms in these houses have 
windows, opening on the one side into the street, and on the other into 
the court-yard, to give a thorough draught; and, as the morning advances, 
an awning at the top of the house is drawn over the court-yard to ex¬ 
clude the sun. 

As I was one day walking through the streets of Havana, I saw, in a 
sitting-room on the ground-floor of a handsome house, what appeared to 



32 


Recollections of North America, in 1849-50-51. 


be a beautiful wax-work figure, of which the face only was exposed to 
view. The figure w'as stretched op what seemed a table, and was 
covered by a large case made of panes of glass, and having a pine-apple¬ 
shaped top. At the foot of the figure were some immense candlesticks 
with lighted candles in them. In the room w r as a gentleman in black, 
with clothes cut in the ordinary European shape, walking up and down, 
and smoking a cigar. The window-shutters were open, so that it was 
impossible to pass along the street without seeing the whole spectacle. I 
asked in French a gentleman at the door of the house what it was. He 
answered, “ Une dame qui est rnorte.” 

The face beneath that frame-work w r as the fairest face that I had seen 
in Cuba. In its calm sweetness it realised the description of that corse, 
to which Byron compares Greece, whose soul had passed away, while its 
beauty remained: 

He who hath bent him o’er the dead, 

Ere the first day of death is fled 

("Before decay’s effacing fingers 

Have swept the lines where beauty lingers), 

And mark’d the mild, angelic air, 

The rapture of repose that’s there, 

The fix’d yet tender traits that streak 
The languor of the placid cheek ; 

And—but for that sad, shrouded eye, 

That fires not, wins not, weeps not now, 

And, but for that chill, changeless brow, 

Some moments, ay, one treacherous hour, 

He still might doubt the tyrant’s power ; 

So fair, so calm, so softly seal’d 
The first, last look by death reveal’d I 


On two of its sides the city of Havana is enclosed by boulevards , 
where are carriage-roads and footpaths, kept in the best order, shaded by 
avenues of royal palm-trees, and bordered with evergreen and often ever- 
flowering shrubs. In these boulevards , in the cool of the evening, the 
beaux and belles often take a drive in their volantes. A vola?ite some¬ 
thing resembles a gig, but has wheels of immense diameter ; and its single 
horse which is laden with silver trappings, and has a plaited tail tied to 
the saddle, is ridden postilion by a negro in the gayest livery. In the 
garden of the Plaza de Armas, a public square, in which the official 
residence of the Captain-General, or Governor, of Cuba is situated, ex¬ 
cellent music was played in the evening by a military band; and, during 
the music, it is a place of much resort. ° 

The Tacon Theatre, built in * faubourg just without the boulevards , 
and called after the captain-general by whose order it was erected, is the 
largest and handsomest theatre in the New World ; and here, on Sunday 

ra V deT g Cool' }^ u °P eras > and sometimes masque^ 

ST. W w k ' f g ’• • "Ti 6 P U0S ( which our transatlantic cousins, 
with a want of precision which I am at a loss to account for, have been 

: 

“ The Bishop’s Garden,” two or three miles from Havana, was open to 
the pnbhe; and though Ins palace within it has been reduced to ifVuin 
either by a hurricane or a fire (I have forgotten which), the grounds were 


33 


Recollections of North America , in 1849-50-51. 

kept in pretty good order. In that climate the fruit-trees seemed to be 
puzzled by the seasons ; but it would appear that they had for the most 
part come to the conclusion that it was safest to produce “the fruits of 
autumn and the flowers of spring,” in admirable c mfusion and profusion, 
all the year round. The pomegranate was amongst the shrubs, which, 
when I was in Cuba, offered you, from the same bough, the ripe fruit and 
the flower. The shrubs and trees were very beautiful. An avenue of 
mango-trees in the Bishop’s Garden afforded, beneath their glossy, deep 
evergreen leaves, a cool, shady retreat from the scorching, glaiing sun. 
But amongst the flowers in the beds I did not see much that we in Eng¬ 
land could envy, as sunflowers and roses—either the same, or very like 
some of those in our gardens —seemed to predominate. 

The palm, rising from the earth with its white column, and, at its 
very summit, rolling over, like a green fountain, its leafy capital ; the 
cocoa-nut tree, with its boll not quite so straight and regular, but display¬ 
ing to you, in compensation, pendant from its green crown, its agreeable 
fruit, the milk within which, though the outer shell has been basking in 
the sun, is as cold as if it had been taken out of an ice-house; the 
banana and the platano, which much resemble each other, rearing their 
straight poles to the height of about ten feet, and having at their top a 
long rich cluster of fruit, together with large leaves that turn over and 
hang down like so many green fans, the sticks composing which have 
come apart; impenetrable hedges, formed of a sort of sharp-pointed aloe, 
called, I believe, sapor el, and often tangled with flowering creepers; and 
whole fields in which pine-apples grow as thick as turnips with us,—these 
are some of the peculiarities that characterise the rural scenery near 
Havana. 

I was sitting under one of a row of palms by a stream, near the 
Bishop’s Garden, ruminating on the prospect, wondering whether the pre- 
adamite creation resembled that of the tropics, and fancying that I had 
seen resemblances in the fossils of the slate and coal formations to the 
vegetation around me, when I was startled from my reverie by a palm- 
leaf falling at my feet. So long, so thick, and so heavy was this branch¬ 
like leaf, and so great was the height from which it fell, that, had it 
lighted upon me, it would probably have done me a serious injury. 

At Cuba, I had only one introduction of the slightest value. When I 
was at Havana, the English .consul, Mr. Crawford, was absent; but 
through the friendliness of his brother, I had been provided with a letter 
of introduction to the consul of the United States, # General Campbell. 
Under such circumstances it was particularly gratifying to me to be re¬ 
ceived and treated by the American consul and his accomplished family 
with the kindness which they showed me. 

At Cuba, Columbus first saw the red men smoke cigars, to which they 
gave the name of tobacco ; and, with their lands, the white men have 
inherited one remarkable trait of their predecessors, for the Cubans smoke 
after every meal, and indeed almost all day long. This, either from the 
nature of the climate, or from living, even when in the house, exposed 


* The government of the United States is in America often called by the cant 
phrase of “Uncle Sam,” from, I am told, the initial letters of United States and 
j Uncle Sam being the same. 





34 


Recollections of North America, in 1849-50-51. 

to the open air, whoever stays in Cuba can do with impunity. When I 
wanted some cigars I asked General Campbell from whom he could 
recommend me to buy them. He mentioned Ugues as a person of re¬ 
markable integrity, and one in whose manufactory nothing but the best 
tobacco was used. Smokers may have a curiosity to know what in Cuba 
I paid for his cigars. I paid, then, four dollars a hundred for large cigars of 
the regalia size, and a dollar and a quarter a hundred for cigars of the size 
most commonly smoked in London. Both were made of the same 
tobacco ; but the former were not only larger, but were twisted with 
greater smoothness, so as to make them look, but not smoke, better. 

Amongst the charms of Havana were the baths cut out, in little cham¬ 
bers, in the coral reefs, upon which the portion of the city, facing the 
sea, is built. You cannot bathe in the open sea, or you would be de¬ 
voured by sharks ; but these baths are close to the sea, and have loopholes 
cut in the rock, opening into it; so that each w^ave which breaks against 
the shore enters them. Sheds are erected over these baths, and you pay 
a small piece of silver money for the privilege of using a bath. There is 
here a rise and fall of the tide of about two feet only. I used to go early 
every morning to these baths. 

From Havana I went by railroad half a day’s journey to the village of 
Guiness, on the opposite side of the island, in order to see some coffee 
and sugar plantations; and I found several of my countrymen on the 
train filling the office of enginemen. All that I saw of Cuba, that was 
cultivated at all, was cultivated carefully; and artificial irrigation w^as 
there much practised. 

Whilst I was at Guiness, an advertisement of a bull-fight in the town 
at the opposite side of the harbour to Havana, appeared in the newspapers. 

It was to take place on the afternoon of the following day; so, on the 
following morning, I returned to Havana thdt I might not lose the only 
opportunity that I might ever have of seeing the celebrated national 
amusement of the Spaniards. The reader may have seen the Coliseum, 
or may be acquainted with the description of it in Corinne : “ Ce superbe 
edifice servit d’arene aux gladiateurs combattant contre les b6tes feroces. 
C’est ainsi qu’on amusait et trompait le peuple Romain par des emotions 
fortes, alors que les sentiments naturels ne pouvaient plus avoir l’essor. 
L’on entrait par deux portes dans le Colysee: l’une qui etait consacrde 
aux vainqueurs, l’autre par laquelle on emportait les morts. Singulier 
mepris pour l’esp&ce humaine que de destiner d’avance la mort ou la vie 
de 1’homme au simple passe-temps d’un spectacle. Titus, le meilleur des 
empereurs, dedla ce Colys6e au peuple Romain.” And the wooden am¬ 
phitheatre, the plaza de toros, situated some mile or mile and a half from 
Havana, was just such a building as in the days of Titus might have 
been erected as the provincial Coliseum of some remote city of the Roman 
empire. The amphitheatre was open to the heaven ; and the tiers of seats 
were protected from the infuriated bull by being raised a considerable 
height above the arena, There were three gates leading into the arena; 
through one of these, over which appeared a royal banner and a military 
band, the champions on horseback entered; through another the live 
bulls entered; and through the third the dead bulls and dead horses were 
dragged ; and, probably, had any of the men in the bull-fight been j 
“butchered to make a” Cuban “holiday,” they would have been carried ( 


35 


Recollections of North America , in 1849-50-51. 

off through the same. On this occasion, a strong wooden cage, as big 
as a room, had been fixed in the centre of the arena ; and, to diversify the 
amusement of the day, a bull and a tiger were introduced into it that they 
might fight; but, having approached each other, they seemed soon to 
come to an understanding, that it should not be their own faults if they 
were killed for the public amusement; and, declining the combat, they 
drew off to opposite corners of the cage. The ladies of Cuba, unlike their 
sisters of Spain, have now discontinued attending bull-fights: and, from 
my own experience of the intense all-absorbing interest which the spec¬ 
tator feels in these exhibitions, I will add that it is an instance of self- 
denial for which they deserve no little credit. Would you recal the sen¬ 
sations with which, at your first play, you watched the clashing of the 
swords of the actors, whose combat and whose danger seemed to your ex¬ 
perience to have something of reality? If so, attend a bull-fight. True, 
it is a cruel pastime. It may make you feel faint or sick to read or to hear 
its details, but not to see them. Your blood will be too hot, your heart 
will beat too quick for that. Sick or faint! who ever was sick or faint 
when the trumpet sounded for the charge of cavalry, though the dead 
and the dying were heaped around him ! 

Well, here, too, the trumpet sounds ; the gate of one of the en¬ 
trances—it is the toril —is thrown open, and the devoted bull advances 
through that gate, by which, for him, there is no return. Already the 
picador , mounted and gorgeously attired, and protected as to his right 
leg with a sort of iron jack-boot, is in the arena. He bears a lance 
not armed with a spear, but a goad; and is sitting on a worn-out 
hack, the eyes of which are covered, that he may the more willingly 
obey the bridle. He has been endeavouring to make poor Rosinante 
curvet—poor Rosinante, whose long services to the human race deserve 
an easier, if not a later, death than that with which he is threatened ! 
Should the bull be eager for the combat, the picador couches his lance, 
and hastens to meet him. It is his object to strike the lance into the 
shoulder of the bull as he makes his charge, and by main force to push 
back or turn him, so as to prevent him from closing upon the horse. 
Sometimes, however, the bull catches the horse with his horns in the 
belly, and lifts both horse and man in the air, or throws both together 
on the ground; and then pedestrian bull-fighters rush forward, and, 
shaking their bright cloaks in his face, endeavour to draw him away 
from his victims. On one occasion, when the bull had made a successful 
charge, the spectators called out to the rider to look at his horse. He 
turned round and rode out of the arena, the poor animal being in a state 
which I have too much consideration for the reader to describe. If the 
bull is not disposed to “ show fight,” he is rendered furious by barbed 
darts, sometimes with little flags, and sometimes with lighted crackers at 
their upper end, which are dexterously thrown and stuck into his neck. 
These darts are called banderillas. If the bull is “game,” these darts 
are not thrown at him at first, and, indeed, the darts with crackers are 
not used at all. When the picador has had some encounters, the ban- 
derilleros, in smart and tight fancy dresses with short jackets, and bear¬ 
ing in the one hand a landerilla , and in the other a cloak, play their 
part on foot. They shake their cloaks in the bull’s eyes, and then, when 
he rushes at them, they, just as he is upon them, trip on one side, and 


36 


Recollections of North America, in 1849 - 50 - 51 . 

insult his failure by sticking a dart into his neck as he passes. When 
they are very hard pressed, they run into one of several little passages 
which are made by putting up a few strong boards, so near the side of 
the arena, that there is just room for a man to enter. Ihe most extra¬ 
ordinary circumstance in the sport, and that which demonstrates what an 
intensity of interest it must create, is that, when the bull makes a 
successful charge, the whole amphitheatre resounds just as much with the 
cry of “ Toro ! toro ! ” as it does with the appropriate language of applause, 
when the picador has gallantly charged him with his lance, or the 
handerillero has skilfully added another javelin to those on his mane, or 
the matador struck with unerring eye and hand the fatal stroke. Last 
enters the scene the messenger of death, the matador. He is armed 
with a two-edged sword, that rather resembles an old Roman sword, and 
has a cloak slung over his left arm. The bull is now nearly exhausted 
by fatigue and by loss of blood. But shall he expire, and unrevenged ? 
He makes a last exertion, and strives, with a staggering foot, to rush at 
the matador. But the matador , stepping on one side, holds out to him 
with his left hand his cloak, while, with his right, as the bull is passing 
him, he plunges his sword through his chest, just between the shoulder- 
bone and the ribs, down to his heart, when— procumhit humi bos —a 
dead weight sinks upon the ground. Some half-naked negroes then 
enter the arena, and drag the body through the gate of the dead. A 
little sand is sprinkled over his blood ; the band strikes up a tune ; after 
which a lancer on a fresh horse, and a fresh bull, enter the lists. On the 
occasion on which I was present, four bulls and two horses were killed. 

In Cuba, I understand, the public celebration of no religion but that of 
Rome is allowed. The cathedral at Havana had exquisite music, but the 
tunes and the instrumental performance more resembled those of an opera 
than did any which I had previously heard in a place of worship. In¬ 
deed, within the choir was a band, with violins and all kinds of musical 
instruments. It was generally, perhaps always, open* in the day, and 
was a sweet and cool retreat. But the object of most attraction there is 
contained in a niche in the wall of the chancel; for here, behind a mural 
monument, comprising a bust of Columbus, a sepulchral urn contains his 
honoured dust. The inscription on the monument, being translated, is as 
follows: “ Oh, remains and image of the great Columbus, may you rest 
a thousand ages guarded in the urn and in the remembrance of our 
nation !”f 

* In such places an Englishman must sometimes contrast with pain the conduct 
of the Church of Home with that of some of the rulers of his own national Church. 
In the abbey church at Bath there is, or was, two or three years ago, service on 
some of the week days; but on these occasions the west entrance, with the nave, 
was shut up, and you approached the choir, where service w r as performed, by 
a little side-door at the east, missing altogether the part of the church which had 
grand proportions. If you wanted to see that, you had to find out the pew-opener, 
and pay her for turning the key of a door. Surely our ancestors erected such 
magnificent edifices under the impression that the mind of the worshipper might 
he elevated—that it might be better prepared to approach the throne of God by 
his passing through such a vestibule; and they never could have contemplated 
that a time would come when, just before and after service, it would be turned by 
the clergyman and churchwardens into a sixpenny peepsliow. 

f O restos e imagen del grande Colon, mil siglos durad guardados en la urna y 
en la remembracia dc nuestra nacion! 



37 


Recollections of North America , in 1849-50-51. 

The relics of Columbus have been almost as frequently moved as those 
of St. Cuthbert, who also had (if monkish chronicles are to be believed), 
though in a different sense. 

Pointed to other worlds, and led the way. 

The body of Columbus, which had been buried and reburied in Spain, was 
removed to the island of St. Domingo ; and, hence, was at length collected 
in an urn, and carried to Cuba, all that remained of the first conqueror, 
legislator, and missionary, whose exploits the great ocean did not bound. 
The name of Columbus is by the Spaniards written Colon. The inscrip¬ 
tion on his first tomb—that at Valladolid—is literally translated in the 
following couplet: 

To Castille and Leon 

A new world gave Colon.* 

Had this inscription been repeated, it would have seemed to reproach the 
Spaniards of the present day with the advantages which they have lost; 
for, of this vast gift, the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico are all that they 
retain. 

These islands used to be regarded politically as integral parts of Spain; 
and, as such, sent representatives to the Spanish cortes. And, though 
the privileges of these islands (which may be presumed never to have 
comprised sufficient guarantees for liberty) have in some respects been 
curtailed, they, for some purposes, and especially those of taxation, 
are still treated as portions of the mother country. The taxes of Cuba 
contribute a most important proportion of the Spanish revenue. Hence, 
quite independently of all general considerations of the balance of power, 
any nation, whose private capitalists have advanced loans to the Spanish 
government on the security of its revenue, is bound, in justice to its own 
citizens, to endeavour, while such debts remain unpaid, to prevent Cuba 
from being w r rested from Spain by foreign invasion. At the time of the 
recent sad and ill-advised expeditions of General Lopez, some of the 
United States newspapers, which supported the adventurers and the an¬ 
nexation of Cuba to the Union as the consequence of their enterprise, 
maintained that England would eventually attempt to appropriate it, if 
the United States did not anticipate her. Never was there a greater 
mistake. Why, England would not accept Cuba at a gift: for she is pledged 
to herself and to the world to possess no more slave-holding colonies; she 
never interferes with vested rights without giving compensation ; and her 
people are not prepared to pay another 20,000,000/. sterling to purchase 
the freedom of the slaves of the Cubans. The taxes paid by Cuba to the 
Spanish treasury are an immense annual drain upon her resources. Still, 
however, she continues rich, and her planters rival in their wealth the 
opulent nobility of the old world. Their fields produce more than one 
crop of Indian corn in the year; and the sugar-cane, which in Louisiana 


* A Castillo y a Leon 
Nuevo mundo dio Colon. 

Another version of the same original epitaph is: 

Por Castilla y por Leon 
Nuevo mundo hallo Colon. 

Though no Spanish scholar, I have ventured to select the former as the neater 
of the two. 



38 


Recollections of North America , in 1849-50-51. 

has to be planted every two or three years, continues In Cuba to yield 
crops for a long succession of years (I think for ten or twelve), from the 
same root. Cuba has no paper money, no copper currency that I ever 
saw, and no banks. Indeed, I was assured that the jealousy entertained 
by Spain of all sorts of meetings would prevent the establishment of such 
an institution as a joint stock bank in the island. 

The Spaniards speak of the native Cuban colonists as being ignorant 
and degenerate, and frequently tainted with Indian and African blood. 
But this, we must recollect, is a description of a people given by those 
who have injured them, and who want an excuse for having deprived 
them of all the public offices of trust, honour, and emolument in. their 
own island. The bureaucratic insolence of the Spanish stranger is felt 
from one end of Cuba to the other ; and in the necessary intercourse 
with the authorities on the subject of passports—and you cannot move 
without one prescribing your route—the traveller observes more than 
the usual amount of that low swagger and lounging indifference which 
often characterise the dregs of official life. 

The Cuban slave has one peculiar and valuable privilege, which should 
tend to make his master indulgent and himself industrious. If he wishes 
to change his master, and can get any one else to give for him a certain 
sum fixed by law, he can, on application to a public officer, compel his 
master to sell him to the purchaser that he has interested in his behalf. 
That this law is not a dead letter, I know ; for an innkeeper at Guiness 
—-a Mrs. Lawrence, from Boston in Massachusetts—told me that, much 
to her regret, she had through its operation been obliged to part with a 
valuable slave. On Sunday, it is a strange sight to a European, on 
walking through some of the back streets of Havana, to see, through the 
open windows of small houses of entertainment kept exclusively for them, 
negroes in fantastic groups ; some dancing, while others are playing 
instruments; and all apparently as merry and thoughtless as young 
children just escaped from their task at school for a holiday. 

Their dances and their instruments were African. Sometimes they 
knew them only through the traditions of their parents, but often, alas ! 
they themselves had danced them and played them in Africa ; and occa¬ 
sionally, it is probable, even within a few months of the day on which 
I was present at their performance. It was quite notorious—I was told 
it over and over again—that, on the payment to the captain-general of a 
fixed proportionate sum, a Cuban might import as many African slaves 
as a slaver could contrive to run upon the coast, notwithstanding that 
ever since 1821 their importation had been forbidden bylaw and by 
treaty. I am sorry that I did not at the time write down the amount of 
bribe which had to be paid for the introduction of each slave. I believe 
it was two doubloons, and a doubloon is worth sixteen dollars, or about 
£3 5s. of English money. It is just possible that the sum mentioned to 
me may have been three doubloons—and I am willing that the captain- 
general should have the advantage of the doubt—and, if it were so, I 
have done the injustice of rating the price of the honour and honesty of 
the highest Spanish official at Cuba between £3 and £4 lower than its 
common market price. In estimating, however, a man’s conduct, one 
must not omit entirely from consideration the standard of the class and 
country to which he may belong. You would not have hoped for the 


39 


Recollections of North America , in 1849 - 50 - 51 . 

same grace in the inhabitant of Memphis, who had been taught that in 
the river the crocodile, and in the air the beetle, presented fitting objects 
ot worship, that you would have required in his Athenian contemporary, 
whose wont long had been, at the shrine of Delphi, 

To “view the Lord of the unerring bow, 

The God of life, and poetry, and light— 

The Sun in human limbs array’d, and brow 
All radiant from his triumph in the fight 

and at the Temple of Cyprus, to wreathe, with votive myrtle, 

The shrinking-“ statue that enchants the world.” 

And it would, perhaps, have been unfair to have expected that the 
common amount of integrity of a gentleman of the United States, or of 
England, should have been found in the Conde de Alcoy. Still let us hope 
that the change, which has since taken place, may have been for the 
better ; as he has recently been superseded. 

It is a more profitable speculation, where it is practicable, to import 
than breed slaves; hence, in Cuba, few women are imported in propor¬ 
tion to the men, and successive generations of negroes are “ used up” and 
replaced by others from Africa. The continuance of the slave-trade is 
opposed to the principles of the northern and southern portions of the 
United States, and to the pecuniary interests of their southern planters. 
The planter of the Union does not increase his stock of slaves by impor¬ 
tation, but his Cuban and Brazilian rivals do; therefore they can raise 
produce like his by cheaper labour. 

A letter, dated 2nd of May, 1850, was written to me by an able friend, 
living in a British colony, in which, to a commission for the suppression 
of the slave trade, he fills a judicial situation; and I will make a quota¬ 
tion from it: merely adding, that, as it was only a few weeks before the 
first of these two chapters on North America was published that I deter¬ 
mined upon writing upon that subject at all, I have not had time to obtain 
the permission of my correspondent to make use of his letter; but that, 
as my object is to give the matter to which he alludes some slight addi¬ 
tional chance of falling under the eye of the philanthropic politicians of 
the United States, I trust he will forgive the liberty. The letter says, 
“ No country is more severe upon slave-trading than the United States, 
when she fairly catches her subjects in the act; but, unfortunately, 
the American flag is much prostituted in the provision of slaves to 
Brazil and Cuba by means of United States vessels, which are really 
sold to Brazilians, but go to the coast of Africa under United 
States colours, by which means they avoid the search of our ships (as 
America never would give us a right of search) until our cruisers are out 
of the way, when slaves are popped on board, the Brazilian flag hoisted, 
or none at all, and the venture fairly off towards Brazil or the Spanish 
colonies, as the case may be. This iniquitous state of things, unworthy 
of the Americans in every way, has been alluded to by the president in 
his address to congress. I am sorry to say our commission has had many 
opportunities of attesting the fact. Two cases were particularly iniqui¬ 
tous. They occurred on the east coast of Afiica, and were those of the 
American vessels the Kentucky and the Porpoise .” 

Understanding from some of my late fellow-passengers, citizens of the 


40 


Recollections of North America , in 1849-50-51. 

United States, that they had received letters from home, informing them 
that General Lopez was likely to land an invading force on the island in 
a few days, and being anxious, in consequence of my ignorance of 
Spanish, to leave before any confusion occurred, I embarked at Havana 
for New Orleans in a sailing-vessel called the Adams Gray , and arrived 
at my destination not many days before Lopez and his companions did 
at theirs. 

In Cuba there is an export duty on tobacco; but, as I took away with 
me only a few boxes containing 800 cigars, the custom-house officers 
said that they should not exact it. At New Orleans, however, my cigars 
were taken to the custom-house; and it cost me two hours’ time and 
forty per cent, duty, to get them through it. At all the ports of the 
United States that I entered, the passengers’ luggage is examined by the 
custom-house officers on board the vessel which brings you, instead of 
being, as it is with us—to the great loss of time of the passenger—most 
unnecessarily, and therefore most improperly, taken to the custom-house 
to be overhauled. It is so ne years since I have landed at the port of 
London. When I last, however, had the misfortune to have my trunk 
and carpet-bag in its custom-house, I observed that after the examination 
was done, a sort of porter, who had been watching for us in the custom¬ 
house, came up to the different passengers and asked them whether they 
wanted a hackney-coach; then, having brought it to the door, he pro¬ 
ceeded much in this fashion, “ M’am, allow me to take your work-bag; 
pray, m’am, let me carry that cloak; sir, your umbrella and stick, if you 
please.” But when, under the escort of this civil porter, you arrived at 
the coach-door, you found that he had not only a specific charge for 
calling the coach, but also a separate authorised demand of so many pence 
for every separate article which he had carried. It might have been 
thought that as passengers’ luggage had not been carried into the custom¬ 
house for their own gratification, it would have been carried out of it 
without putting them to expense. I should like to know how much, and 
to whom, these civil porters paid for permission to wait in the rooms of 
the custom-house. Can government .have allowed this miserable petti¬ 
ness to continue last year, and disgrace us before the world ? 

But let us return to New Orleans. Though the northern people, 
bringing with them their English names, are greatly increasing in num¬ 
bers at New Orleans, and though there is an immense amount of English 
capital invested in this city, and many English merchants and clerks re¬ 
siding there, and even some London shopkeepers having branches of their 
establishments, yet all the older parts of the city are unmistakeably 
French. Here the inscriptions over the shops are in the French lan¬ 
guage, and, in it, the actors perform and the Church of Rome preaches. 

An Englishman is accustomed to see ships; the great amount of ship¬ 
ping, therefore, at the lower end of the crescent sweep of the river, upon 
which the city is built, has for him none of the interest of novelty; but, 
proceeding upward on the “ levee,” or artificial bank protecting the land 
from the river, he arrives at such a sight as has never been seen elsewhere 
than at New Orleans. Here he finds I should think at least two miles, 
and perhaps more, of wharfage quite filled with a continuous line of 
nothing but immense river-steamboats. Nor is that surprising, when it 
is considered that the Mississippi and its tributaries, and the tributaries 
again which fall into them, have been calculated to afford a freshwater 




41 


Recollections of North America , in 1849-50-51 

steam-navigation of 16,674 miles in extent; that the country which they 
water comprises the most fertile soil in the world ; and that the race inha¬ 
biting it has often shown,in portions both of New and Old England, 
that it had energy to make the least fertile productive, or, if at length it 
should be found unprofitable to plough the land, would plough the sea 
instead, and reap from that its golden harvest. With the increase of 
the population each year, there must be an increased development of the 
boundless resources of the mighty west. But is New Orleans likely to 
retain her relative importance ? Will she still continue to receive consign¬ 
ments from every land from which the Mississippi obtains waters ? Pro¬ 
bably not; for last spring was nearly completed, and perhaps may now 
be quite, a line of railroad connecting the upper part of the Ohio river 
with New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, all Atlantic ports ; and, as 
canal and railroad communications increase, the “ western waters” must 
be “ tapped,” and cheap and rapid communications must be made uniting 
some of the cities of the Ohio with Richmond on the James’s river, and 
some of the cities of the Mississippi with Charleston; both of which com¬ 
municate with the Atlantic Ocean. The distance from New Orleans to 
the Gulf of Mexico is considerable, and the navigation tedious and wind¬ 
ing. Several vessels are generally towed up to New Orleans together 
by a steamer ; but, under any circumstances, the ascent of the river is a 
great increase of expense. For this reason, and because the Atlantic cities 
are far nearer Europe, much of the western commerce is likely to be 
eventually transferred from New Orleans to the “ Atlantic cities.” The 
“ crescent city” is, I think, the dearest place that I ever was in ; and 
money seems here to be made and squandered with the greatest rapidity. 
Here, as indeed in some other portions of the Southern States, you see 
no copper-money in circulation ; the only place at which it is the custom 
to receive or pay it being the Post Office. 

In England, from the circumstances of our population, there are two 
words, which, though not strange in sound, do not for the most part 
convey to us very definite ideas. It is not improbable that, if a party of 
English persons were suddenly asked to give a synonyme for the word 
“ creole,” some of them would answer “ quadroon”—a mistake for which 
I can assure them they would not very readily be pardoned by an indivi¬ 
dual properly comprised under the former appellation, whatever they 
might by that under the latter. But both creoles and quadroons are 
abundant in New Orleans. I conceive the term quadroon, defined with 
precision, to mean that variety of the human race which is born from the 
union of a white father with a mother who was the child of a white man 
and an unmixed negress. But I think in the United States it is commonly 
applied to all those mixed descendants of the African and European races, 
in which the complexion more nearly approaches that of the white than 
that of the black ancestors. In Tchudi’s Travels in Peru, a German 
work, of which an English translation has been published in the United 
States, is to be found a distinct Spanish name for almost every possible 
cross of the European, African, and American-Indian races amongst 
each other. In all of the slave-holding states of the Union, a white per¬ 
son is prohibited by law from intermarrying with any one, whether free 
or slave, who has “coloured blood.” And, in the non-slave-holding states, 
almost as strong an interdiction to such an alliance is placed by public 

D 


42 


Recollections of North America , in 1849-50-51. 

custom and opinion. Nowhere, I believe, throughout the United States, 
would “ a coloured person” be permitted to sit down at a fable-d’hote to¬ 
gether with those of the white race. And the effect of a single cross is 
visible to the experienced eye of a native for remote generations. To us, 
in a country inhabited by a race exclusively Caucasian, these laws and 
customs, at the first view, appear unreasonably bard ; yet I presume that 
there they are desirable or necessary, in order to procure a most im¬ 
portant result—namely, the maintenance of the purity of the white 
race.* But neither law nor custom inexorably prohibits an inter¬ 
marriage with those of Indian descent. The blood of the Princess 
Pocahuntas, whose warm, generous heart has long since mouldered in 
British soil, is still respected in the veins of some of the gentry of Vir¬ 
ginia."j* 

The story of Pocahuntas is a beautiful episode in the heroic period of 
American history. Shortly after the commencement of the seventeenth 
century, Captain Smith, the most able and enterprising of the settlers in 
the new colony of Virginia, had been taken prisoner by the Indians, and 
was sentenced by their emperor, Powhatan, to have his brains dashed 
out; when the favourite daughter of the monarch, the young Poca¬ 
huntas, whose tears had been unable to move the stern resolve of her 
father, rushing to the spot of execution, laid her own head between the 
head of the prostrate victim and the upraised clubs of the executioners. 
It was too much: the father yielded. Pocahuntas afterwards was con¬ 
verted to Christianity, and married to an English gentleman of the name 
of Rolfe, who was one of the colonists. She then visited England, where 
she was received with distinction ; and, as she was preparing to return to 
her native country, died at Gravesend. 

Gentle spirit! who can tell when shall end the influence of thy deed 
of mercy? Already, for two centuries, have the severe laws, which for¬ 
bid the amalgamation of the distinct varieties of the human race, been 
relaxed for thee! Already, for two centuries, when the rifle of the 
white man has covered the naked breast of an Indian foe, oft, at the 
remembrance of thy sweet story, has its point been turned harmless to the 
ground! 

But it is now time to inquire what means a creole in New Orleans. 
I had some notion that it might there mean a very pretty woman. In 
my faith, however, in this interpretation of the word, I was soon a good 
deal shaken ; not (as every reader who has been at New Orleans will 
readily believe) by hearing the term applied to a lady who was otherwise, 
but by seeing on a barn-door the words “ creole hay,” and on the break¬ 
fast bill of fare at the St. Charles’s hotel the words “creole eggs.” In 

* M. de Beaumont, the travelling companion in America of M. de Tocqueville, 
author of “ Democratic en Amerique,” does not appear to have valued or seen 
this. His novel, “ Marie ou l’Esclavage aux Etats-Unis,” in which he appears to 
have aimed at doing for the United States that which Madame de Stael, in her 
“ Corinne,” has done for Italy, contains observations on society often acute, deli¬ 
cate, and subtle—what the French call Jin —but does not show the mind of a 
statesman or philosopher. It indicates the possession of perceptive, rather than 
of reflective, powers. 

t Yet I am assured, by those who have lived in Central America, that, in 
some of the nations there, a cross of African is considered less discreditable than 
a cross of Indian blood. So unfixed on some subjects are the foundations of public 
opinion. 



43 


Recollections of North America , in 1349*40-51. 

my perplexity, I applied, on the latter occasion, to the Irish waiter who 
was standing* behind my chair, to know what “ creole eggs” were. And 
he answered me as glibly as possible, “ Boiled eggs, please your honor. 
‘ Creole ’ means boiled.” But it could not well bear that meaning, I 
thought, when applied to hay, let alone ladies; so I made further in¬ 
quiries. The result was the information that creole is, by interpreta¬ 
tion, “ nativethat, when applied in the United States to persons, it 
implies that they were of pure white descent, though not necessarily 
sprung from any particular state or nation, and that they had been born 
either in Louisiana or Florida ; which states, in the early part of this 
century, were acquired,—the one from France, and the other from 
Spain. # 

I learnt, also, that when applied to hay, it meant that made in the 
neighbourhood, and which consequently had not run the risk of getting 
wet in a voyage; and that wdien applied to eggs, it meant such as were 
the produce of the surrounding poultry-yards, and might, therefore, be 
fresh ; whereas, those which were imported, and not “ creole,” could not 
be so. I will not conclude this philological disquisition without adding 
that the creole ladies of New Orleans are considered to be distinguished 
for grace and beauty of person, and taste and simplicity of dress. 

As the reader, how T ever unwilling he might have been to leave the 
creoles themselves, will have no objection by this time to leave the dis¬ 
cussion of them, we will, with his permission, proceed together to Mobile.f 

New Orleans is built on a narrow slip of land of five or six miles in 
width, pressed on the one side by the Mississippi and on the other by 
Lake Pontchartrain, which opens into Lake Borne, an arm of the Gulf of 
Mexico. A half hour’s afternoon ride on a railway takes you from New 
Orleans to Lake Pontchartrain, whence, by the next morning, a steamer 
will have transported you to Mobile, in the state, and on the river, of 
Alabama, and in the immediate vicinity of the Gulf of Mexico. 

I shall always recollect with pleasure a drive which one of my country¬ 
men, a gentleman long settled, and much respected, at Mobile, took me 
to the Magnolia Grove, some five or six miles off. It consists of two or 
three acres of magnolia-grandiflorse, growing to the size that oaks with 
us attain in about seventy years. On the one side of this is the Gulf, on 
the other a forest, principally of pines. 

In a letter dated from Mobile, 28th of January, 1851, which a friend 
has lent me to refresh my memory, I find that I have made a few obser¬ 
vations which I will copy: “I was at the St. Charles’ Hotel (New 
Orleans) when the fire occurred. I sent you a newspaper with an account 
of it. The woods in this neighbourhood (‘ section of country’ is the 
common American phrase) are principally composed of evergreen trees. 
In them the magnolia, the live oak, and the pitch-pine strive for the mas¬ 
tery. The boll of a magnolia in one of the native woods here I measured, 
and found that, about four feet from the ground, it was ten feet and 
three-quarters in circumference. The pine here has a very long leaf, and 
the wood is of a reddish colour. It is used by the French and Spaniards 

* Creole is a French word: the corresponding Spanish word is criollo. 
f I took this route from New Orleans when I was leaving it the following 
winter; but on my return from Cuba I ascended the Mississippi, as is mentioned 
in the previous part. 



44 


Recollections of North America, in 1849-50-51. 

for the masts of ships; and the Indian women (who alone of the Indians 
work) bring it into the town oil their backs, split up into small pieces, and 
sell it to light fires with. From the quantity of pitch in it, it burns like 
a candle. The live oak is an evergreen, which, in leaf and general ap¬ 
pearance, something resembles the holm-oak with us. The wood is very 
valuable for ship-building. By-the-by, the finest holm-oaks which I re¬ 
collect having seen are in the garden of the rectory at Sedgefield. They 
were planted by the celebrated Bishop Louth, when he was there as 
rector. I shall shortly start for Charleston, South Carolina.” 

It may have been observed that, at the commencement of the foregoing 
extract, the sending of a newspaper was mentioned. This newspaper was 
very likely the New Orleans Picayune , which is so called from the name, 
at New Orleans, of the piece of Spanish money charged* for it, as the Gaz- 
zetta , a single sheet published in Venice in the sixteenth century (whence 
our Gazette ), was called from the name of a coin there, worth about an 
English halfpenny, for which it was sold. In the United States the 
Spanish silver money is as common as that from their own national mints. 
The Spanish half medio, the lowest Spanish coin in common currency 
there, is a small piece of silver, of which sixteen make a dollar, and which 
is worth, therefore, six and a quarter cents. It is in New Orleans called 
a picayune (possibly from the Italian piccino , small, and the French un, 
one); in New York it is called a sixpence, and in Boston a fourpence. 
The price of a London daily newspaper is, in United States money, ten 
cents; and though the London publisher has to pay a stamp duty and a 
duty on paper, which the New Orleans publisher escapes, yet, considering 
that the newpapers issued by the former is, on an average, more than twice 
the size of that issued by the latter, the London newspaper is the cheaper 
of the two. 

Maisrevenons a nos moutons. In order to get from Mobile to Charles¬ 
ton, you ascend the Alabama in a steamboat as far as the city of Mont¬ 
gomery. Thence you might proceed, when I was there, nearly all the way 
—and, probably, now, all the way—by railroad. But if you should wish 
to see something more of the principal cities of Georgia than you would 
have an opportunity of doing by that route (and they are worth seeing), 
you should first go to the young, handsome, and rapidly rising city of 
Macon, and thence proceed by railroad to Savannah, which is a seaport, 
and is the chief commercial city of the rapidly improving state of Georgia. 

Excepting Boston (where there is a handsome park, modestly called 
the common), every city, I believe, and every village, throughout the 
Union, is adorned, in a great proportion of its streets, with avenues of 
trees; but no other city, that I ever visited in any part of the world, is 
so beautifully planted, in its streets and squares, as Savannah. Here the 
trees are principally evergreen ; and in the streets the magnolia and live 
oak grow side by side. The magnolia is found gradually to dwindle as 
you proceed north; but as far north as Virginia you may see it, in plea¬ 
sure grounds, of the size of an oak of forty years’ old with us. 

A single night’s voyage in a mail steamer will take you from Savannah 
to Charleston. 

Though the traveller may miss the daisy from the meadow and the 

* The leading newspapers of Washington—the National Intelligencer , the Union, 

and the Republic —are ably and honourably conducted, and cost six cents each. 
The New York Herald , remarkable for early information, costs two cents. 




45 


Recollections of North America , in 1849 50-51. 

nightingale from the grove, he must have been unfortunate or unob¬ 
servant in the American domestic circles in which he has been intro¬ 
duced, it he has never found ample consolation for their absence, in that 
modesty and melody of which the flower and the bird are the appropriate 
emblems. Still, in their woods, the Americans have no feathered 
nightingales.. With this knowledge, when Mademoiselle Jenny Lind 
was expected in Virginia, I scribbled a few verses; and 1 will just give a 
touch to the first and the last verses, in order to make them run more 
smoothly; and then, with apologies, transcribe them : 

A WELCOME TO RICHMOND, IN VIRGINIA, FOR THE SWEDISH 
NIGHTINGALE. 

What! if warm be the hearts, or if bright be the flowers, 

In the Richmond reflected in calm-flowing Thames ; 

Warm hearts too are ours, and beautiful bowers, 

In the Richmond that greets thee where gushes the James 
Here’s thy own fitting arbour, thy sweet myrtle bough ; 

Here the yet virgin rosebud for thee is array’d ; 

She had listened till now to no nightingale’s vow, 

But had deem’d that unlov’d on her stalk she must fade 
Here from rich Alabama, from Florida fair, 

For thy welcome hath stray’d the magnolia tree ; 

And the storms of the air each sweet chalice yet spare, 

That bears in pure dew a fit offering for thee. 

AVhen I commenced writing on America, I intended to dismiss my 
subject, immense as it was, in a single article ; but, as I went on, I dis¬ 
covered that, in spite of me, my matter would expand into two. And 
now that, near the end of January, I have produced an article already of 
reasonable length, and have a head and hand that ache with writing, I 
find that much that I might say remains untold. The patience of the 
reader, however, shall no longer be trespassed upon by details. But I 
will conclude with a few observations on the United States, in regard to 
the appearance of the country”, the prospect of the emigrant, the cha¬ 
racter of the native, and the nature of the government; and then drop 
m y P en > trusting that any reader, who on either side of the Atlantic may 
chance to look at these articles, will excuse such faults* as haste or any 
other cause, except design (for of faults arising from that cause I have 
none), may have produced. 

What, then, exclusive of their obvious difference in extent of territory, 
are some of the striking points of physical dissimilitude to England in 
the country comprised under the great American Union ? The rude 
wooden fences of various forms, sometimes Vandyked, sometimes straight; 
the entire absence of hawthorn hedges, to which one of the insects of 
America has been found fatal; the country-houses and the watering- 
place hotels, often imposing from their size and pillared pediments, yet 

* I find that in my first article I have made two errors—one in the text, the 
other in a note. The former is that I confounded Mr. Isaac P. Walker, who is, 
and was, when I was at Washington, one of the senators from the state of Wis¬ 
consin, with Mr. R. J. Walker, who is now in England, and was formerly 
Secretary of the Treasury, to a government composed of the democratic party. 
The latter error is that I stated the annual allowance of the President of the 
United States to have been 20,000 dollars, or a little more than £4000, whereas it 
is 25,000 dollars, or a little more than £5000. 

E 



46 


Recollections of North America , in 1849-50-51. 

constructed of wood painted white ; large cities in the east, where the 
prospect is not obscured by smoke, but where, from the use of anthracite 
coal, the air in the houses is dried as if heated by hot iron ; fields of Indian 
corn, amongst the stalks of which it is hardly an exaggeration to say 
that Gulliver might have been lost; the magnolia and evergreen-oak vin¬ 
dicating their places amongst the trees of the southern forest; the cedar 
—more resembling the yew than the cedar of Lebanon—predominating 
in the north; the extensive pine barrens of the south-east, where the 
tapped sides of the exhausted trees distil pitch; the boundless prairies of 
the south and west, into some of which the bee alone, of European ex¬ 
plorers, has yet penetrated ; the occasional island-like clumps within 
them, where the trees for successive generations live and die without 
the aid of man; the orchards of standard peach-trees; the Cyprus 

_not the sombre tree that alone, of all that he had cultivated, 

would follow the Roman to his grave, but one shedding its light- 
green, delicate, larch-like leaves, and raising its red and stool-like 
roots over the unreclaimed swamps of the south; the adjacent banks 
of the stagnant “ bayou,” where bask in summer the terrapin and the 
alligator; the frequent buzzard, protected as a scavenger; the recently 
cleared lands of the West, in which stumps of trees still project, the ready 
tribunes of the rustic orator; the gay plumage of the red-bird of the 
South ; the sweet song of the mocking-bird, so sweet that it should never 
deign to imitate the voice of another; the fairy proportions of the hum¬ 
ming-bird, hovering over the flowers and dipping his tiny beak into their 
cups; the butterfly that is his rival in size and in beauty; the fire-fly, 
through the greater part of the year glancing at night like a little meteor ; 
the sea-like rivers; the ocean-like lakes; the bright blue of the sky; the 
rich clear-obscure of the midnight heaven; the dazzling sunlight, so 
dazzling that at mid-day the blinds of the drawing-rooms are kept down 
and the shutters three-parts closed to exclude the glare; the gay and 
gorgeous sunsets; and the tints of the autumnal forest, not less gay and 
gorgeous—all these distinguish it from England. 

The prospect of the emigrant to the United States from the British 
Isles shall now have a brief consideration. 

Of the emigrants of our nation, the English emigrant, who should 
bring some property with him, would very likely be the least successful. 
Unless the promises, contrasted with the performances, of the English 
railroads, have given him a lesson, he might perhaps be lead by plausible 
representations, of which he would meet plenty, into ruinous investments; 
and then, erroneously supposing that the loss of money in a new country, 
was as irrecoverable a thing as in an old, might fail in heart and energy. 
The Scottish emigrant would keep clear of such speculations; and the 
Irish emigrant, if he got into them, would not care. When in the 
autumn of 1849, I was at Oswego, in the western part of the state of 
New York, I made some inquiries of a common Irish labourer as to his 
wages and mode of living. He said he received three quarters of a 
dollar a day, which is about 3s. and 2d., in English money ;* but had to 
pay two dollars a-week for board, and also to pay for his washing. If he 
had a lot of garden ground, he complained that he should have to pay a 
local tax for a school, whether he had children to attend it or not. He 

* Ills pay in Ireland would, I believe, have been then about 8d., or 16 cents, if 
lie found liimself in food; and would now be about Is., or 24 cents. 



47 


Recollections of North America , in 1849 - 50 - 51 . 

(lid not seem satisfied with his change of country ; being probably an 
idle fellow, and finding that here, to get well paid he must work hard. 
He complained that, when working on the railroads, he was not allowed 
to smoke a pipe. Indeed, I afterwards understood from a gentleman of 
the greatest experience in the railroads of the United States, that the 
railroad contractors carried matters with a very high hand towards the 
Irish labourers, having found that concession made them insolent and 
unmanageable. The Irish labourers bring over, and retain, the cunning 
and the ignorance of savages ; but their children get an education, which 
narrow bigotry would have denied them in their own country, and they 
rise into “ Americans.” The Irish male labourers will not, for the most 
part, settle in country places as farm-servants, but stay in the great 
cities, or work in gangs on the public works; that they may have their 
joke, their drinking bout, and their row together ; though they and their 
families would get on better if dispersed. Irish female emigrants, desti¬ 
tute and nearly starving, often refuse to go into domestic service in the 
country.* They are said to be very wasteful in the kitchens. In the 
United States, English domestic servants are scarce, and are much 
valued. 

The situation of a white domestic servant in the southern states is 
not desirable; for he belongs to no class, has no equals or companions, 
unless, indeed, he goes as a waiter to one of the very large hotels. A 
southern lady, however, sometimes has at the head of her establishment 
a white housekeeper, who, never sitting or eating with the negroes, 
regards herself almost as the equal of (a word that she would not 
use for the world) her mistress. A small farmer, or a respectable and 
educated labourer, might do very well, as a family man, if he could get 
the situation of overseer on a plantation ; i.e., a large estate in the south, 
which the proprietor himself farms. All the overseers are white men, 
and exercise a delegated authority over the negroes. The houses pro¬ 
vided for them are comfortable, and their situation is considered re¬ 
spectable. 

The negroes are a careless race. They canuot be induced to keep 
flower-gardens in good order, and are apt to dig up flowers for weeds ; 
hence a gardener, who would go round and attend the garden lots on 
which many of the houses are situated, would do well in the southern 
cities. 

As a general rule, much more capital is required to set up as‘a farmer 
in the southern than in the northern states; the farms in the former 
being larger, the land there being cultivated almost entirely by the labour 
of slaves, who must be bought, or hired, from their masters ; and who 
require being more looked after, and usually do less work, than white 

* The great drawback to the comfort of living in the Northern States, is the 
difficulty of getting, and keeping, passably good servants. This difficulty is 
amusingly illustrated, with perhaps some exaggeration, in “ The Recollections 
of a Housekeeper,” a now rather scarce book, of which Mrs. Gilman is the 
authoress. The negroes in the South do not make what we, in England, should 
consider first-rate servants; but they get into the ways of their masters, and 
must remain with them. The adventures of a settler in the outskirts of civilisa¬ 
tion in the far West, are most interestingly pourtrayed in a work, called “ A New 
Home. Who’ll follow?” by Mrs. Mary Clavers. The work, however, is written 
by a lady of the name of Kirkland; and the incidents contained in it have, for 
the most part, I am assured, actually occurred. 




48 


Recollections of North America , in 1849-50-51. 

men. Should an English farmer wish to settle in the United States, he 
should go to the north-east, if he consider the obtaining for his children 
a very good education a sufficient advantage to counterbalance the dis¬ 
satisfaction of having to plough a not very grateful soil; but if his object 
be to procure land, at the same time wonderfully productive and cheap, 
he should emigrate to the free states of the west, say, for instance, the 
states of Ohio and Illinois. Labour in these states he would find dear ; 
but, if he have a family of sons, he must make them work ; and in the 
end he will probably become rich himself, and be able to establish his 
sons on farms of their own. After a residence of five years in the Union, 
emigrants may claim naturalisation; but those, least qualified by their an¬ 
tecedents to discharge the duties of American citizens, often anticipate the 
period by perjury; and to this none of the political parties venture to 
make an objection, lest it should lose them votes. 

The best dish known only to the Americans is the canvas-back duck. 
One of the peculiarities of their table is the various shapes in which Indian 
coin appears. We in England never see it, or if by strange chance we 
should, we do not like it, for we do not know how to dress it. This is 
to be regretted, as the use of it would effect a great saving to us. A 
book, written by Miss Leslie, the sister of the painter and Royal Acade¬ 
mician of that name, and published at Philadelphia for a quarter of a 
dollar, under the name of the “ Indian Meal-book,” gives the best receipts 
for dressing it. At Montpelier, the capital of the state of Vermont, I 
met with an excellent brown bread, which I was told was in common use 
throughout New England, and which in taste and appearance much 
resembled such brown wheat bread as I had eaten in the West Riding of 
Yorkshire. I asked how it was made. The receipt was as follows :— 
one-third of rye to two-thirds of Indian corn meal; to which, for a good- 
sized loaf, add half a pint of treacle. The bread is made with yeast and 
water. Most cattle in the United States are found to thrive upon Indian 
corn, excepting cows in milk ; for them it is found too heating, as it dries 
up their milk. 

Probably in no other country is there so high an average of morality 
as in the United States. In no other country do the women devote 
themselves so assiduously to the care of their families and their house¬ 
hold duties, or the men to the pursuit of their respective trades or pro¬ 
fessions. Indeed, if a change were to be made, it would be desirable 
that it should be rather by relaxing than increasing the pertinacity with 
which each sex follows its peculiar avocations. The Americans are said 
to be eager to make money in the way of their business ; but they are 
very willing to spend it on their own pleasures, and those of their fami¬ 
lies and friends. And there is no other country in which the man, who, 
having acted honourably, had been overwhelmed by commercial misfor¬ 
tunes, would be so generously supported and set up again by his friends, 
as he would in the United States. It grates upon the ear of an English¬ 
man to hear the word “smart” sometimes applied to such pecuniary 
transactions as elsewhere would not have had their acuteness put forward 
as their most prominent characteristic. But, nevertheless, New York, 
and other great commercial cities of the Union, are not without firms 
which, for integrity—ay, and liberality—would advantageously compare 
with any in the wmrld. 

The inhabitants of the different states differ greatly. If there is any 


49 


Recollections of North America, in 1849 - 50 - 51 . 

one characteristic in which they all agree with each other, and differ 
from the rest of the world, that should be sought. It was said, and 
truly, of the Americans, by one of their presidents, that they are “ a 
very go-a-head people,”—meaning that the American citizen is the most 
enterprising of men. The American is more enterprising than the 
Englishman, because, in his wide and comparatively thinly-peopled 
country, should he fail in one business, he may succeed in another ; 
should he be unprosperous in this state, he may establish himself in the 
next. Nor must we omit this from our consideration of the relative 
risks encountered, that a mere commercial failure attaches to it more of 
disgrace in England than it does in the United States. 

The Americans are, amongst themselves, fond of titles, regarding them 
as honourable badges of the confidence of the people. Once a governor 
of a state, or once a judge, you are ever after addressed as “governor” 
or “judge;” and he who has ever been a member of the national or of 
any state legislature, is addressed as “ the honourable” for life. Though 
amongst the Americans you do not, as with us, see such interesting an¬ 
nouncements as that, “ by special appointment of the Lord Chamberlain, 

Messrs. -have become purveyors of cat’s-meat to her Majesty,” you 

often observe, ostentatiously displayed in the shop-windows (what pro¬ 
duces, no doubt, as great an effect), such autograph letters as the follow¬ 
ing : “ Madame,—I beg to inform you that I have received and tried 
your new lozenges ; and have wonderfully recovered.—Your obedient ser¬ 
vant, Millard Fillmore.” Or: “Mr. Webster presents his compli¬ 
ments to the proprietors of the new cast-iron coffin works. Though, 
from circumstances, he has been debarred from doing more than inspect¬ 
ing the specimen obligingly sent, he entertains no doubt that it is as airy, 
roomy, and comfortable as, for its purpose, could be desired.” 

The Americans, considered throughout the length and breadth of their 
land, are a good-natured and a most kind-hearted people. Cceteris paribus , 

I had rather ask or receive a favour from an American than from an Eng¬ 
lishman. Throughout the United States you are allowed the privilege of 
making a call in the evening.* And where, in England, you would think 
it right merely to leave a card, without asking to go in, you had better not 
do so in America, as it would probably be considered unfriendly. The ex¬ 
quisite—drawling in the “ Tenth don’t dance” style, such as you sometimes 
see amongst the young men of our universities and our army—is not 
known to the entomologists of America, except as a rare and curious Bri¬ 
tish importation. You meet with much less of vulgar sw r agger in the 
United States than you do in our own manufacturing districts. When 
you do find it, it is commonly in a man who, being Irish or Scotch by 
birth, has risen in the country of his adoption beyond the hopes of his 
youth. To an American it has never seemed improbable that he should 
rise. On the whole, the legal society may be considered the best in the 
United States. The lawyer there, like our colonial barrister, unites the 


* The saying of the late Earl of Dudley and Ward, who was possessed of a 
good character, high talents, and an income of between one and two hundred thou¬ 
sand pounds a-year, and was at one time a cabinet minister, had often been 
repeated even before it was published in the “ Quarterly lieview.” It was, that, 
should he some evening want to have a cup of tea made for him, there was not a 
house in London where he could take the liberty of calling and asking for it. 





50 Recollections of North America , in 1849 - 50 - 51 . 

business of counsel and attorney; but, unlike our own barristers, be 
generally unites, from the commencement of his career, the pursuit of po¬ 
litics with that of his profession. He is soon returned to his state, and 
hopes eventually to be returned to his national, legislature ; while, on the 
other hand, the merchant, unlike our own, hardly ever seeks or finds ad¬ 
mittance to a legislative body. 

In beauty, the ladies of the United States have, on the average, the ad¬ 
vantage of the ladies of Europe. But I cannot help remarking that—if 
those of the northern states could so far overcome their feminine reserve as 
to acknowledge, even by a slight inclination of the head, a consciousness that 
a gentleman, who has not been so fortunate as to be introduced to them, 
has yet been so fortunate as to give up to them his seat, to pick up their 
glove or handkerchief, or hand them the salt—such slight concessions to 
the universal manners of Europe would give them more in grace than it 
would detract in dignity. 

The northern ladies have sometimes a voice that is rather nasal; an in¬ 
heritance transmitted, with many virtues, from their Puritan ancestors, 
who, according to Hudibras, used on the “ Sabbath” to 

Quarrel with minc’d pies, and disparage 
Their best and dearest friend—plum-porridge; 

Fat pig and goose itself oppose, 

And blaspheme custard through the nose.* 

Nor can it with absolute veracity be asserted that they invariably possess 
that “excellent thing in woman,’’j - a low voice. 

I do not know whether, as the northern people have preserved some 
peculiar tones of the Puritans, the southern may not be the last reposito¬ 
ries of the accents of the Cavaliers, from whom many of them draw their 
descent. Certainly, the voice of a southern lady sounds rather foreign to 
an Englishman of the present day; and certainly the voice of a southern 
lady is the softest and most melodious English that he has ever heard. 
The southern ladies are in their manners very natural and winning. They 
have more of ease than their English, more of softness than their French, 
contemporaries. A southern lady seems at once to say or do the best 
thing, through the impulse of a heart, in the delicate and amiable instincts 
of which she has a right to confide. She does not pause to consider effect; 
and the effect produced is perfect. 

Every one knows that in the United States there is no religion en¬ 
dowed by the state; though in the prayers read in Congress, and perhaps 
on some other occasions, there is a national acknowledgment of Chris¬ 
tianity. Here the voluntary system has certainly answered. I have 
attended the services of various denominations of Christians, and have 
invariably found the pulpits and reading-desks well filled, and the con¬ 
gregations attentive. It is sometimes, however, a very reasonable ground 
of complaint, that the clergy, in their sermons, do not know when to stop. 

Apropos of stopping, the “hour rule” in the national house of represen¬ 
tatives produces a curious effect. When the allotted time has expired, 
down goes the auctioneer’s hammer of the “ Speaker,” and knocks down 
the orator with his sentence unfinished. This has its advantages; but it 
provokingly reminded me of this passage in a farce: “‘And Flosbos 
sinks to eter ’—nity, he would have said, but Fate cut short the thread, of 


* Canto I., line 227 . 


t King Lear. 



51 


Recollections of North America , in 1849-50-51. 

his discourse and life, at once.” In the national senate it is usual for only 
one lengthy oration to be made in the course of a day, so that a senator, 
intending to answer another, has all the evening to prepare himself. 
Cries of “ hear ! ‘hear !” and “ oh! oh !” are never heard in the legislative 
assemblies of the United States; and a long quotation or a tiresome speech 
is submitted to with a resignation unknown to us. 

The “ Protestant Episcopal Church,” the daughter of our own Eng¬ 
lish establishment, has made a few, and but very few, changes in its 
prayer-book from ours. These changes (one of which is the omission of 
the Athanasian creed) many both of our own clerical and lay members 
would regard as improvements. It every three years holds a convention, 
in which the bishops form an upper, and representatives from the clergy 
and laity, a lower, house. 

“ The Constitutions and Canons for the Government of the Pro¬ 
testant Episcopal Church in the United States of America” are pub¬ 
lished in New York. Dr. Wilberforce, the present Bishop of Oxford, 
has produced a history of this church; but I do not know what repu¬ 
tation the work bears in America. 

The same differences have arisen in that Church that are agitating 
ours. Thus, in the adjoining dioceses, Dr. Lee, the Bishop of Mary¬ 
land, is Low Church; Dr. Doane, the Bishop of New Jersey, is Trac- 
tarian ; and Dr. Potter—a name distinguished, during the last century, in 
the literary and episcopal history of England, as it is now in that of the 
United States—occupying a middle path, presides, with zeal, dignity, and 
prudence, over the diocese of Pennsylvania. 

The national government of the Union levies no taxes, but is supported 
by the duties on imports, the sale of public lands, and the profits of the 
post-office. The taxes imposed by the different states are generally not 
heavy, but the rates exacted for local purposes, education, police, public 
works, &c., are often exorbitant. Yet the opulent citizen of the United 
s tates has this great security against a tax, or the assessment of a tax, 
being inflicted on him that shall amount to confiscation, namely, that he 
can move to another city, another township, or another state, and, carry¬ 
ing his wealth with him, deprive the locality by which he has been injured 
of all future advantage from it. 

Unlike ourselves, the Americans have a written constitution, for making 
any alteration in which greater formalities are required than for passing 
an ordinary law of congress. By this constitution all parties profess to 
hold; but, in some points, there is a slight difference in its interpretation; 
and the different political parties claim to be guided by different views of 
these points. The only two great parties of the nation were, till lately, 
the Whigs and the Democrats; but recently a third, called “The Free Soil 
Party,” and characterised by great activity, has sprung up in the North. 
This last opposes the introduction into the Union of any more slave¬ 
holding states ; and it opposed the passing, and still opposes the execution, 
of the law by which it was enacted, that slaves flying from their master to 
the free states should, on demand, be returned. By regarding these points 
as paramount, it seems to aim at exercising the same sort of influence in 
the United States that the Irish party does with us. The Whig party 
leans most to those portions of the constitution which aim at extending 
and strengthening the general government; whereas the Democratic 
party strives to render the separate states as independent of the general 
government as is possible within the limits of the constitution. All of its 
original independent sovereignty, that a state by its ascent to the con¬ 
stitution of the Union, has not expressly, or by necessary implication, 


52 


\ 

IlecitllectioHS of No) th America, in 1849 - 50 - 51 . 

yielded to the national government, it still retains. And the Whig is much 
more ready than the Democrat to stretch this implication to the making, 
from national funds, of such public improvements, as the cutting of im¬ 
portant roads, and the removing obstructions to the navigation of great 
rivers. Yet in regard to such expenditures, when they tend directly to 
the advantage of his own state or neighbourhood, the democrat also is 
sometimes found open to conviction. 

The slave-holding states are jealous of the least approach to national 
interference, and are, for the most part, democratic. «The Democrats are 
free-traders, the Whigs are protectionists. In the north-eastern states 
many manufactories exist, but labour is dear; so the inhabitants want 
protection, in order to prevent countries where labour is cheap competing 
with the home manufacturer in his own market, nor have they any objec¬ 
tion to such retaliation on the part of other countries as, confining the 
southern agriculturist to his home market, should cheapen the “ raw ma¬ 
terial” of food and manufactures : and they are, consequently, Whigs. In 
the south and the west, the land is very fertile, and the occupation is 
agriculture; so the inhabitants want free trade, in orSer that they may 
get a great foreign market for their produce, as well as buy manufac¬ 
tured goods cheaply ; and are, consequently, Democrats. The mob of 
Irish and German emigrants know nothing about either patty, except 
the names; but, liking the name of Democrat best, they generally 
vote for the candidates that are on what is called “the Democratic 
ticket.” From these various causes the Whigs will not be able to 
carry a tarif more hostile to foreign manufactures than the present. 
Before every election, the Whigs and the Democrats have each a separate 
meeting, called a “ caucus”* meeting, to decide what candidates it is 
most desirable to place on their respective “ tickets” of recommendation, 
in order to promote the success of the party. The Americans are warm 
politicians; but, with them, you may belong to a different political party, 
as you may to a different church, from other members of your family, 
without giving offence to your relatives. 

The senate is the federal element of the constitution; each state return - 
ing two senators to Congress. The house of representatives is the 
national element of the constitution; the representatives sent to Congress 
from each state being proportioned to its population. In the slave-holding 
states “ coloured people” never vote ; but for the purpose of apportioning 
the representation in the house of representatives, five slaves are counted 
as three white men. This proportion is called “federal numbers.” Dis¬ 
regarding mere names, we find that the conservate principle in the Union 
receives its most effective support from the southern states. 

Of the American constitution, Lord Brougham says : “ The regulation 
of such a Union upon pre-established principles —the formation of a 
system of government and legislation in which the different subjects shall 
be not individuals, but states—the application of legislative principles to 
such a body of states—and the devising means for keeping its integrity 
as a federacy, while the rights and powers of individual states are main¬ 
tained entire—is the very greatest refinement in social policy to which 


* “ Caucus meeting” has been supposed to be a corruption of “ caulkers' meetina” 
as the first caucus meetings on record took place in the part of Boston, in Massa¬ 
chusetts, frequented by the caulkers of ships. Caucus meetings are mentioned, in 
Gordon’s “History of the American Revolution,” to have been held, under the 
same name, in Boston, for electioneering purposes, as early as the earlier half of 
the eighteenth century. 





Recollections of North America, in 1849-50-51. 

any state of circumstances has ever given rise, or to which any a 
ever given birth.”* 

I^^dj^h e mode of e lectimrt the President of the United States^H^ 

that the measui^fl of 

e< eas es, am \ox J^piinistors who-ar 

* ot allowo^K 

•toss. =t. is .oustit o ' .. .. i the United ta f \ ihuBie Prqjjid&r 
■nn'st/'. of diffe fi house of C 

as the Congress tc? claim to be me 

In drawing a picture of a people displaying so much of prospemp|||^i 
prise, and virtue, we may not omit the painful fact, that some oUtlie 
states have shamelessly repudiated the debts which they have contracted, 
and which neither Congress nor the United States court has any constitu¬ 
tional right to compel them to pay. But it is some consolation to an 
Englishman to know that there is no state, on which the stain of repudia¬ 
tion still appears, that was ever a colony of England. 

* Lord Brougham’s “ Political Philosophy,” chap. xxx. 

f The election of President and Vice-president is confided to State electoral 
posed of apportioned numbers of popular representatives, whose in¬ 
is are transmitted to Washington. By the legislature of each State, 
;o the national Senate are appointed. In each State the qualifications, 
a member of the national house of representatives, are the savne 
r voting for a member of the house of representatives of the particular 



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